New York Times V Sullivan

Two of America's foremost legal historians illuminate the 1964 Supreme Court case that pitted Alabama segregationists against the New York Times and its critical depiction of the Deep South at the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

A crucial and compelling account of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case that redefined libel, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. The First Amendment puts it this way: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Yet, in 1960, a city official in Montgomery, Alabama, sued The New York Times for libel—and was awarded $500,000 by a local jury—because the paper had published an ad critical of Montgomery's brutal response to civil rights protests. The centuries of legal precedent behind the Sullivan case and the U.S. Supreme Court's historic reversal of the original verdict are expertly chronicled in this gripping and wonderfully readable book by the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. It is our best account yet of a case that redefined what newspapers—and ordinary citizens—can print or say.

This landmark Supreme Court Case reinforced the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment. Mr. L.B. Sullivan was a public official in Montgomery, Alabama, who claimed he had been libeled by an advertisement in the New York Times. The ad questioned police handling of civil rights issues, and as the man in charge of the police force, Sullivan claimed the ad hurt his reputation. The Court affirmed the newspaper's right to print material that it believed to be true, regardless of whether or not it was hurtful to a public official.

An Introduction to Constitutional Law teaches the narrative of constitutional law as it has developed historically and provides the essential background to understand how this foundational body of law has come to be what it is today. This multimedia experience combines a book and video series to engage students more directly in the study of constitutional law. All students—even those unfamiliar with American history—will garner a firm understanding of how constitutional law has evolved. An eleven-hour online video library brings the Supreme Court’s most important decisions to life. Videos are enriched by photographs, maps, and audio from the Supreme Court. The book and videos are accessible for all levels: law school, college, high school, home school, and independent study. Students can read and watch these materials before class to prepare for lectures or study after class to fill in any gaps in their notes. And, come exam time, students can binge-watch the entire canon of constitutional law in about twelve hours.

A provocative, timely assessment of the state of free speech in America With his best seller The Working Poor, Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times veteran David K. Shipler cemented his place among our most trenchant social commentators. Now he turns his incisive reporting to a critical American ideal: freedom of speech. Anchored in personal stories—sometimes shocking, sometimes absurd, sometimes dishearteningly familiar—Shipler’s investigations of the cultural limits on both expression and the willingness to listen build to expose troubling instabilities in the very foundations of our democracy. Focusing on recent free speech controversies across the nation, Shipler maps a rapidly shifting topography of political and cultural norms: parents in Michigan rallying to teachers vilified for their reading lists; conservative ministers risking their churches’ tax-exempt status to preach politics from the pulpit; national security reporters using techniques more common in dictatorships to avoid leak prosecution; a Washington, D.C., Jewish theater’s struggle for creative control in the face of protests targeting productions critical of Israel; history teachers in Texas quietly bypassing a reactionary curriculum to give students access to unapproved perspectives; the mixed blessings of the Internet as a forum for dialogue about race. These and other stories coalesce to reveal the systemic patterns of both suppression and opportunity that are making today a transitional moment for the future of one of our founding principles. Measured yet sweeping, Freedom of Speech brilliantly reveals the triumphs and challenges of defining and protecting the boundaries of free expression in modern America.

"Vivid storytelling built on exacting research." —Bill Keller, New York Times Book Review In 1735, struggling printer John Peter Zenger scandalized colonial New York by launching a small newspaper, the New-York Weekly Journal. The newspaper was assailed by the new British governor as corrupt and arrogant, and as being a direct challenge against the prevailing law that criminalized any criticism of the royal government. Zenger was thrown in jail for nine months before his landmark one-day trial on August 4, 1735, in which he was brilliantly defended by Andrew Hamilton. In Indelible Ink, Pulitzer Prize–winning social historian Richard Kluger has fashioned the first book-length narrative of the Zenger case, rendering with colorful detail its setting in old New York and the vibrant personalities of its leading participants, whose virtues and shortcomings are assessed with fresh scrutiny often at variance with earlier accounts.

For many years, the far right has sown public distrust in the media as a political strategy, weaponizing libel law in an effort to stifle free speech and silence African American dissent. In Sullivan's Shadow demonstrates that this strategy was pursued throughout the civil rights era and beyond, as southern officials continued to bring lawsuits in their attempts to intimidate journalists who published accounts of police brutality against protestors. Taking the Supreme Court's famous 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan as her starting point, Aimee Edmondson illuminates a series of fascinating and often astounding cases that preceded and followed this historic ruling. Drawing on archival research and scholarship in journalism, legal history, and African American studies, Edmondson offers a new narrative of brave activists, bold journalists and publishers, and hard-headed southern officials. These little-known courtroom dramas at the intersection of race, libel, and journalism go beyond the activism of the 1960s and span much of the country's history, beginning with lawsuits filed against abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and concluding with a suit spawned by the 1988 film Mississippi Burning.

The need to protect free speech on matters of governing importance--more than any other element of government--is the defining factor of a free society. Nowhere in the law is that prospect more clearly explained than in the opinion in Times v. Sullivan. This special issue provides an example of the breadth and scope of Times v. Sullivan and the ways in which the case continues to impact the jurisprudence of free expression. It is introduced by two essays designed to provide an overview of the case, providing insights into the origins of the dispute the Court was called upon to settle. The next four articles are testimony to breadth the opinion in this case, particularly dealing with aspects not often considered. Combined, they all demonstrate the lasting significance of what may be the most important free expression case the Court has delivered.