Rereading New York Times v. Sullivan: The Importance of Procedure in Libel Cases

Abstract

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan is notable because it imposed an “actual malice” test that makes it difficult for public figures to recover damages for defamation claims. The intent of this essay is not to minimize the significance of Sullivan , but rather to suggest that most accounts of the case miss one crucial aspect of the Court’s decision. To obtain the desired result—to overturn the jury verdict in Sullivan’s favor—Justice Brennan’s majority opinion created both a substantive standard and a series of procedural safeguards. The actual malice test has been praised as a bulwark of First Amendment freedoms, but absent the accompanying protections laid out by Justice Brennan, it would be a hollow promise as it is the procedural safeguards that guarantees “debate on public issues is uninhibited, robust and wide open.”