INTRODUCTION
In March 1964 the Supreme Court decided New York Times v Sullivan, a decision arising from the emerging civil rights movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The lawsuit 6led in Montgomery, Alabama, in April 1960, by the three city commissioners, including Commissioner of Public Affairs, Lester B Sullivan, against the New York Times was part of a broader strategy by some white Southerners to frighten the Northern press and blunt reporting on and criticism of their often violent reaction to the demands of Blacks for equal rights. That legal assault on the civil rights movement resulted in the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to abandon long-standing common law principles governing defamation and, in their place, to adopt the actual malice standard as the requirement for recovery in defamation cases brought by public officials. The decision proved to be crucial to the success of the civil rights movement by removing the threat of large libel judgments against those who criticized and acted against racial segregation …
John B Lewis and Bruce L Ottley, New York Times v Sullivan at 60: Where Does Defamation Law Go Now?, 73 DePaul Law Review 995 (2024).
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