371, §§ 379—380 (1969). Id., at 154, 87 S.Ct., at 1991. He has served as an officer of local civic groups and of various professional organizations, and he has published several books and articles on legal subjects. Solicitor General Bork has stated: 'Constitutional protection should be accorded only to speech that is explicitly political. As President, Thomas Jefferson pardoned those who were convicted under the Act, and fines levied in its prosecution were repaid by Act of Congress.3 The general consensus was that the Act constituted a regrettable legislative exercise plainly in violation of the First Amendment.4, With the First Amendment made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth,5 I do not see how States have any more ability to 'accommodate' freedoms of speech or of the press than does Congress. On the other hand, a publisher or broadcaster of a defamatory error which a court deems unrelated to an issue of public or general interest may be held liable in damages even if it took every reasonable precaution to ensure the accuracy of its assertions. The protection of private personality, like the protection of life itself, is left primarily to the individual States under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Merin, supra, n. 11, at 377. Also actionable per se were those libels where the imputation, although not apparent from the material itself, would have been slander per se if spoken rather than written. I have stated before my view that the First Amendment would bar Congress from passing any libel law.1 This was the view held by Thomas Jefferson2 and it is one Congress has never challenged through enactment of a civil libel statute. 11 and 12 are not an accurate reflection of the case law in the States in the mid-1960's prior to the developments occasioned by the plurality opinion in Rosenbloom. Although the Court's opinion in the present case departs from the rationale of the Rosenbloom plurality, in that the Court now conditions a libel action by a private person upon a showing of negligence, as contrasted with a showing of willful or reckless disregard, I am willing to join, and do join, the Court's opinion and its judgment for two reasons: 1. The rule that functions well produces a title deed to recognition.' With any such amalgam of controversial elements pressing upon the jury, a jury determination, unpredictable in the most neutral circumstances, becomes for those who venture to discuss heated issues, a virtual roll of the dice separating them from liability for often massive claims of damage. But the fact that the self-help remedy of rebuttal, standing alone, is inadequate to its task does not mean that it is irrelevant to our inquiry. Before filing an answer, respondent moved to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, apparently on the ground that petitioner failed to allege special damages. No. . The Court changes the latter, but not the former, rule. 14. Jefferson's noted opposition to public prosecutions for libel of government figures did not extend to depriving them of private libel actions. . Mr. Justice WHITE asserts that our decision today 'trivializes and denigrates the interest in reputation,' Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S., at 262, 94 S.Ct., at 2842 (concurring opinion), that it 'scuttle(s) the libel laws of the States in . 80, 100 L.Ed. All these necessities that speech be limited are recognized and provided for under the Constitution. 285—288. They read Blackstone, 'a classic tradition of the bar in the United States' and 'the oracle of the common law in the minds of the American Framers . for respondent. (radio 'talk show' host's discussion of gross overcharging for snow-plowing a driveway not considered an event of public or general concern); Autobuses Internacionales S. De R.L., Ltd. v. El Continental Publishing Co., 483 S.W.2d 506 (Tex.Ct.Civ.App.1972) (newspaper article concerning a bus company's raising of fares without notice and in violation of law); Sanders v. Harris, 213 Va. 369, 372—373, 192 S.E.2d 754, 757—758 (1972) (article concerning English professor at a community college); Old Dominion Branch No. Mr. Justice WHITE characterizes New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. Under this rule respondent would escape liability unless petitioner could prove publication of defamatory falsehood 'with 'actual malice'—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.' 1029, 1038 1039, 90 L.Ed. Institutional pressures in large organizations, including some of the press, have a similar effect; it is difficult for an organization to have an open policy of making intentionally false accusations.' Draft No. & Mary L.Rev. He thought that the plurality's 'public or general interest' test for determining the applicability of the New York Times provilege would involve the courts in the dangerous business of deciding 'what information is relevant to self-government.' . After all the evidence had been presented but before submission of the case to the jury, the court ruled in effect that petitioner was neither a public official nor a public figure. But this does not mean that the right is entitled to any less recognition by this Court as a basic of our constitutional system.' PETITIONER: Elmer Gertz. Of course, an opportunity for rebuttal seldom suffices to undo harm of defamatory falsehood. 'On questions of damages, the judge plays an important role. Such an individual merges with the mass. in an attempt to influence it outcome,'40 is simply not forbidden by the First Amendment. This view is only possible if one accepts the position that the First Amendment is applicable to the States only through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth, due process freedom of speech being only that freedom which this Court might deem to be 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964). In any event, if the Court's principal concern is to protect the communications industry from large libel judgments, it would appear that its new requirements with respect to general and punitive damages would be ample protection. 306 F.Supp. 1068 (1952) (Douglas, J., dissenting). 326, 334—336, 286 A.2d 146, 151 (1972) (article concerning a substandard rental property owned by a member of a city housing authority); Standke v. B. E. Darby & Sons, Inc., 291 Minn. 468, 476—477, 193 N.W.2d 139, 145 (1971) (newspaper editorial concerning performance of grand jurors); Whitmore v. Kansas City Star Co., 499 S.W.2d 45, 49 (Mo.Ct.App.1973) (article concerning a juvenile officer, the operation of a detention home, and a grand jury investigation); Trails West, Inc. v. Wolff, 32 N.Y.2d 207, 214—218, 344 N.Y.S.2d 863, 867—871, 298 N.E.2d 52, 55 58 (1973) (suit against a Congressman for an investigation into the death of schoolchildren in a bus accident); Twenty-Five East 40th Street Restaurant Corp. v. Forbes, Inc., 30 N.Y.2d 595, 331 N.Y.S.2d 29, 282 N.E.2d 118 (1972) (magazine article concerning a restaurant's food); Kent v. City of Buffalo, 29 N.Y.2d 818, 327 N.Y.S.2d 653, 277 N.E.2d 669 (1971) (television station film of plaintiff as a captured robber); Frink v. McEldowney, 29 N.Y.2d 720, 325 N.Y.S.2d 755, 275 N.E.2d 337 (1971) (article concerning an attorney representing a town); Mead v. Horvitz Publishing Co. (9th Dist. Kalven, The Reasonable Man and the First Amendment: Hill, Butts, and Walker, 1967 Sup.Ct.Rev. Our experience as a Nation testifies to the ability of our democratic institutions to harness this dynamic tension. Ibid. Curtis Publishing co. v. Butts, supra, 388 U.S., at 155, 87 S.Ct., at 1991. Petitioner sued respondent for libel and won a jury verdict. Because an ad hoc resolution of the competing interests at stake in each particular case is not feasible, we must lay down broad rules of general application. In our continuing effort to define the proper accommodation between these competing concerns, we have been especially anxious to assure to the freedoms of speech and press that 'breathing space' essential to their fruitful exercise. Note, The Scope of First Amendment Protection for Good-Faith Defamatory Error, 75 Yale L.J. This conclusion is not based on a belief that the considerations which prompted the adoption of the New York Times privilege for defamation of public officials and its extension to public figures are wholly inapplicable to the context of private individuals. I find it unacceptable to distribute the risk in this manner and force the wholly innocent victim to bear the injury; for, as between the two, the defamer is the only culpable party. There has been no demonstration that state libel laws as they relate to punitive damages necessitate the majority's extreme response. As the Court pointed out in Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 482, 77 S.Ct. A Chicago policeman named Nuccio was convicted of murder. No. For the reasons stated below, we hold that the States may not permit recovery of presumed or punitive damages, at least when liability is not based on a showing of knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. Moreover, punitive damages may not be recovered by showing malice in the traditional sense of ill will; knowing falsehood or reckless disregard of the truth will not be required. . abridging the freedom of speech or the press' only after he suggested: The people shall not be deprived of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty or reputation of others . The owners of the press and the stockholders of the communications enterprises can much better bear the burden. At the time of the adoption of the First Amendment, obscenity law was not as fully developed as libel law, but there is sufficiently contemporaneous evidence to show that obscenity, too, was outside the protection intended for speech and press. 1323, 1325, 20 L.Ed.2d 262 (1968); accord, Beckley Newspapers Corp. v. Hanks, 389 U.S. 81, 84—85, 88 S.Ct. The protection of private personality, like the protection of life itself, is left primarily to the individual States under the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Ante, at 348.1 I adhere to my view expressed in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., supra, that we strike the proper accommodation between avoidance of media self-censorship and protection of individual reputations only when we require States to apply the New York, Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. . In his opinion for the plurality in Rosenbloom v. Metromedia, Inc., 403 U.S. 29, 91 S.Ct. 2013 (1945); see also Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241, at 260, 94 S.Ct. The court added in n.8 that it included the word "sig-nificant" to the test because it believed there were still some areas of privacy to which the New York Times standard did not apply. The First Amendment requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters. In the brief period since Rosenbloom was decided, at least 17 States and several federal courts of appeals have felt obliged to consider the New York Times constitutional privilege for liability as extending to, in the words of the Rosenbloom plurality, 'all discussion and communication involving matters of public or general concern.' I did so because I concluded that, given New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. Id., at 62, 91 S.Ct., at 1829. A. Sutherland, Constitutionalism in America: Origin and Evolution of Its Fundamental Ideas 118—119 (1965). Rather, it concluded that petitioner might overcome the constitutional privilege by making a factual showing sufficient to prove publication of defamatory falsehood in reckless disregard of the truth. See The Supreme Court, 1970 Term, 85 Harv.L.Rev. ); Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218, 86 S.Ct. 1811, 1827, 29 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971), Mr. Justice White voted to apply the New York Times privilege to media defamation of an individual who was neither a public official nor a public figure. A result of that kind inevitably leads to uncertainty. Whether or not the course followed by the majority is wise, and I have indicated my doubts that it is, our constitutional scheme compels a proper respect for the role of the States in acquitting their duty to obey the Constitution. Because they have not voluntarily exposed themselves to increased risk of injury from defamatory falsehoods, they are also more deserving of recovery. . 'The harm resulting from an injury to reputation is difficult to demonstrate both because it may involve subtle differences in the conduct of the recipients toward the plaintiff and because the recipients, the only witnesses able to establish the necessary causal connection, may be reluctant to testify that the publication affected their relationships with the plaintiff. . Adoption, by many States, of a reasonable-care standard in cases where private individuals are involved in matters of public interest—the probable result of today's decision—will likewise lead to self-censorship since publishers will be required carefully to weigh a myriad of uncertain factors before publication. Eminent authority has warned that, 'it is clear that proof of actual damage will be impossible in a great many cases where, from the character of the defamatory words and the circumstances of publication, it is all but certain that serious harm has resulted in fact.' Therefore, he argued, even if the subject matter of the article generally were protected by the New York Times privilege, under the opinion of the Rosenbloom plurality, the defamatory statements about him were not. In the Court of Appeals petitioner made an ingenious but unavailing attempt to show that respondent's defamatory charge against him concerned no issue of public or general interest. Senator Calhoun in reporting to Congress assumed the invalidity of the Act to be a matter 'which no one now doubts.' His opinions, being public, tend never to be different; his aspirations, being known, tend always to be conventionally accepted ones; his feelings, being openly exhibited, tend to lose their quality of unique personal warmth and to become the feelings of every man. E. Hudon, Freedom of Speech and Press in America 47—48 (1963). . Although the impact of the publication on the victim is the same, in such circumstances the injury to reputation may apparently be presumed in accordance with the traditional rule. 192 (Black, J. More commonly, those classed as public figures have thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved. In New York Times the Court held that under the circumstances the newspaper's failure to check the accuracy of the advertisement against news stories in its own files did not establish, reckless disregard for the truth. Nor does the Constitution require us to draw so thin a line between the drastic alternatives of the New York Times privilege and the common law of strict liability for defamatory error. Under the new rule the plaintiff can lose, not because the statement is true, but because it was not negligently made. 725, 738, 96 L.Ed. cases that applied Butts to the alleged libel of a public figure.' In St. Amant v. Thompson, 390 U.S. 727, 731, 88 S.Ct. Notwithstanding petitioner's remote connection with the prosecution of Nuccio, respondent's magazine portrayed him as an architect of the 'frame-up.' Sixty-eight cities have a radio station owned by the only local daily newspaper, and 160 television stations have newspaper affiliations. 'The right of a man to the protection of his own reputation from unjustified invasion and wrongful hurt reflects no more than our basic concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being—a concept at the root of any decent system of ordered liberty. It thought that respondent's claim to the protection of the constitutional privilege depended on the contention that petitioner was either a public official under the New York Times decision or a public figure under Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130, 87 S.Ct. The teaching to be distilled from our prior cases is that, while public interest in events may at times be influenced by the notoriety of the individuals involved, '(t)he public's primary interest is in the event (,) . The fear of opening a credibility gap, and thereby lessening one's influence, holds some participants in check. But this would mean that the seemingly innocuous mistake of confusing petitioner's role in the litigation against Officer Nuccio would destroy the privilege otherwise available for calling petitioner a Communist-fronter. 1148, 1149, 92 L.Ed. In this respect, therefore, the damages were presumed because of the impossibility of affixing an exact monetary amount for present and future injury to the plaintiff's reputation, wounded feelings and humiliation, loss of business, and any consequential physical illness or pain. Even if the foregoing generalities do not obtain in every instance, the communications media are entitled to act on the assumption that public officials and public figures have voluntarily exposed themselves to increased risk of injury from defamatory falsehood concerning them. On its face this inaccuracy does not appear defamatory. . cases dealing with an alleged libel of a private individual that employed a public interest standard . '3 I noted in Rosenbloom that performance of this task would not always be easy. Id. 1975, 18 L.Ed.2d 1094. Prior to the Revolution, the American Colonies had adopted the common law of libel.11 Contrary to some popular notions, freedom of the press was sharply curtailed in colonial America.12 Seditious libel was punished as a contempt by the colonial legislatures and as a criminal offense in the colonial courts.13. Gertz. It thus withdraws to the factual limits of the pre-Rosenbloom cases. Held: 1. This is true whether the form of the accommodation is civil or criminal since '(w)hat a State may not constitutionally bring about by means of a criminal statute is likewise beyond the reach of its civil law of libel.' 807, 291 N.E.2d 398, 400—401 (1973) (article concerning a candidate's votes in the legislature); Priestley v. Hastings & Sons Publishing Co. of Lynn, 360 Mass. Mr. Justice Marshall therefore reached the conclusion, also reached by Mr. Justice Harlan, that the States should be 'essentially free to continue the evolution of the common law of defamation and to articulate whatever fault standard best suits the State's need,' so long as the States did not impose liability without fault. A majority of the Court evidently thought otherwise, as is particularly evidenced by Mr. Justice White's separate concurring opinion there and by the respective dissenting opinions of Mr. Justice Harlan and of Mr. Justice Marshall joined by Mr. Justice Stewart. The Court held that while the. volume_up. Thus, under the plurality opinion, a private citizen involuntarily associated with a matter of general interest has no recourse for injury to his reputation unless he can satisfy the demanding requirements of the New York Times test. v. Robert Welch, Inc. No. I can conceive of no privilege or immunity with a higher claim to recognition against state abridgment than the freedoms of speech and of the press. 1811, 29 L.Ed.2d 296 (1971). A publisher or broadcaster of defamatory falsehoods about an individual who is neither a public official nor a public figure may not claim the New York Times protection against liability for defamation on the ground that the defamatory statements concern an issue of public or general interest. ( concurring opinion ). damages rules an awareness 's appeal from an order, 322 F... Times test to an expanding variety of situations or not, the law Torts... ) ; Pollard v. Lyon, 91 S.Ct a third view would grant to news... 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