Volume 39, Number 11 · June 11, 1992
The Coming Battles over Free Speech
By Ronald Dworkin
Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment
by Anthony Lewis
Random House, 354 pp., $25.00
The United States stands alone, even among democracies, in the extraordinary degree to which its constitution protects freedom of speech and of the press, and the Supreme Court's great 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan is a central element in that constitutional scheme of protection.[1] The Constitution's First Amendment provides that government may 'make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….' In its Sullivan decision, the Court said that it follows that a public official cannot win a libel verdict against the press unless he proves not only that some statement it made about him was false and damaging, but that it made that statement with 'actual malice'—that its journalists were not just careless or negligent in researching their story, but published it either knowing that it was false or in 'reckless disregard' of whether it was false or not. The decision imposed that strong burden of proof only on public officials; it left private individuals free to recover damages according to state law, which traditionally allows plaintiffs to win who prove only that statements about them are false and damaging.
Review, 8281 words
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