On March 29, 1960, The New York Times published a full-page advocacy ad that aired very legitimate civil rights grievances — but aspects of the ad’s most condemning accusations were false, untrue and, arguably, reputation-damaging. The newspaper was judged liable for libel by a jury, a trial judge, and the Supreme Court of Alabama.
Had L.B. Sullivan’s libel lawsuit not been presented so persuasively at trial and so effectively in refuting The Times’ arguments to the Supreme Court of Alabama, the case would not have been reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. That 1964 review obliged the court to make law — fashion a standard, craft a leeway, a jurisprudential “out” or “escape” — in order to overcome the 1960 inattentions, irresponsibility, lawyerly evasions, and institutional intransigence of The New York Times.
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