New York Times Co. v. Sullivan

Mr. Justice Goldberg,

Douglas joins, concurring in the result.

The Court today announces a constitutional standard which prohibits “a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with *298 ‘actual malice’ — that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Ante, at 279-280. The Court thus rules that the Constitution gives citizens and newspapers a “conditional privilege” immunizing nonmalicious misstatements of fact regarding the official conduct of a government officer. The impressive array of history 1 and precedent marshaled by the Court, however, confirms my belief that the Constitution affords greater protection than that provided by the Court’s standard to citizen and press in exercising the right of public criticism.

In my view, the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution afford to the citizen and to the press an absolute, unconditional privilege to criticize official conduct despite the harm which may flow from excesses and abuses. The prized American right “to speak one’s mind,” cf. Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 270 , about public officials and affairs needs “breathing space to survive,” N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 433 . The right should not depend upon a probing by the jury of the motivation 2 of the citizen or press. The theory *299 of our Constitution is that every citizen may speak his mind and every newspaper express its view on matters of public concern and may not be barred from speaking or publishing because those in control of government think that what is said or written is unwise, unfair, false, or malicious. In a democratic society, one who assumes to act for the citizens in an executive, legislative, or judicial capacity must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticized. Such criticism cannot, in my opinion, be muzzled or deterred by the courts at the instance of public officials under the label of libel.

It has been recognized that “prosecutions for libel on government have [no] place in the American system of jurisprudence.” City of Chicago v. Tribune Co., 307 Ill. 595, 601 , 139 N. E. 86, 88 . I fully agree. Government, however, is not an abstraction; it is made, up of individuals — of governors responsible to the governed. In a democratic society where men are free by ballots to remove those in power, any statement critical of governmental action is necessarily “of and concerning” the governors and any statement critical of the governors’ official conduct is necessarily “of and concerning” the government. If the rule that libel on government has no place in our Constitution is to have real meaning, then libel on the official conduct of the governors likewise can have no place in our Constitution.

We must recognize that we are writing upon a clean slate. 3 As the Court notes, although there have been *300 “statements of this Court to the effect that the Constitution does not protect libelous publications . . . [n]one of the cases sustained the use of libel laws to impose sanctions upon expression critical of the official conduct of public officials.” Ante, at 268. We should be particularly careful, therefore, adequately to protect the liberties which are embodied in the First and Fourteenth Amendments. It may be urged that deliberately and maliciously false statements have no conceivable value as free speech. That argument, however, is not responsive to the real issue presented by this case, which is whether that freedom of speech which all agree is constitutionally protected can be effectively safeguarded by a rule allowing the imposition of liability upon a jury’s evaluation of the speaker’s state of mind. If individual citizens may be held liable in damages for strong words, which a jury finds false and maliciously motivated, there can be little doubt that public debate and advocacy will be constrained. And if newspapers, publishing advertisements dealing with public issues, thereby risk liability, there can also be little doubt that the ability of minority groups to secure publication of their views on public affairs and to seek support for their causes will be greatly diminished. Cf. Farmers Educational & Coop. Union v. WDAY, Inc., 360 U. S. 525, 530 . The opinion of the Court conclusively demonstrates the chilling effect of the Alabama libel laws on First Amendment freedoms *301 in the area of race relations. The American Colonists were not willing, nor should we be, to take the risk that “[m]en who injure and oppress the people under their administration [and] provoke them to cry out and complain” will also be empowered to “make that very complaint the foundation for new oppressions and prosecutions.” The Trial of John Peter Zenger, 17 Howell’s St. Tr. 675, 721-722 (1735) (argument of counsel to the jury). To impose liability for critical, albeit erroneous or even malicious, comments on official conduct would effectively resurrect “the obsolete doctrine that the governed must not criticize their governors.” Cf. Sweeney v. Patterson, 76 U. S. App. D. C. 23, 24, 128 F. 2d 457, 458 .

Our national experience teaches that repressions breed hate and “that hate menaces stable government.” Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357, 375 (Brandéis, J., concurring). We should be ever mindful of the wise counsel of Chief Justice Hughes:

“[I]mperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.” De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353, 365 .

This is not to say that the Constitution protects defamatory statements directed against the private conduct of a public official or private citizen. Freedom of press and of speech insures that government will respond to the will of the people and that changes may be obtained by peaceful means. Purely private defamation has little to do with the political ends of a self-governing society. The imposition of liability for private defamation does not *302 abridge the freedom of public speech or any other freedom protected by the First Amendment. 4 This, of course, cannot be said “where public officials are concerned or where public matters are involved. ... [0]ne main function of the First Amendment is to ensure ample opportunity for the people to determine and resolve public issues. Where public matters are involved, the doubts should be resolved in favor of freedom of expression rather than against it.” Douglas, The Right of the People (1958), p. 41.

In many jurisdictions, legislators, judges and executive officers are clothed with absolute immunity against liability for defamatory words uttered in the discharge of their public duties. See, e. g., Barr v. Matteo, 360 U. S. 564 ; City of Chicago v. Tribune Co., 307 Ill., at 610 , 139 N. E., at 91 . Judge Learned Hand ably summarized the policies underlying the rule:

“It does indeed go without saying that an official, who is in fact guilty of using his powers to vent his spleen upon others, or for any other personal motive not connected with the public good, should not escape liability for the injuries he may so cause; and, if it were possible in practice to confine such complaints to the guilty, it would be monstrous to deny recovery. The justification for doing so is that it is impossible to know whether the claim is well founded until the *303 case has been tried, and that to submit all officials, the innocent as well as the guilty, to the burden of a trial and to the inevitable danger of its outcome, would dampen the ardor of all but the most resolute, or the most irresponsible, in the unflinching discharge of their duties. Again and again the public interest calls for action which may turn out to be founded on a mistake, in the face of which an official may later find himself hard put to it to satisfy a jury of his good faith. There must indeed be means of punishing public officers who have been truant to their duties; but that is quite another matter from exposing such as have been honestly mistaken to suit by anyone who has suffered from their errors. As is so often the case, the answer must be found in a balance between the evils inevitable in either alternative. In this instance it has been thought in the end better to leave unredressed the wrongs done by dishonest officers than to subject those who try to do their duty to the constant dread of retaliation. . . .

“The decisions have, indeed, always imposed as a limitation upon the immunity that the official’s act must have been within the scope of his powers; and it can be argued that official powers, since they exist only for the public good, never cover occasions where the public good is not their aim, and hence that to exercise a power dishonestly is necessarily to overstep its bounds. A moment’s reflection shows, however, that that cannot be the meaning of the limitation without defeating the whole doctrine. What is meant by saying that the officer must be acting within his power cannot be more than that the occasion must be such as would have justified the act, if he had been using his power for any of the purposes on whose account it was vested in him. . . .” Gregoire v. Biddle, 177 F. 2d 579, 581 .

*304 If the government official should be immune from libel actions so that his ardor to serve the public will not be dampened and “fearless, vigorous, and effective administration of policies of government” not be inhibited, Barr v. Matteo, supra, at 571 , then the citizen and the press should likewise be immune from libel actions for their criticism of official conduct. Their ardor as citizens will thus not be dampened and they will be free “to applaud or to criticize the way public employees do their jobs, from the least to the most important.” 5 If liability can attach to political criticism because it damages the reputation of a public official as a public official, then no critical citizen can safely utter anything but faint praise about the government or its officials. The vigorous criticism by press and citizen of the conduct of the government of the day by the officials of the day will soon yield to silence if officials in control of government agencies, instead of answering criticisms, can resort to friendly juries to forestall criticism of their official conduct. 6

The conclusion that the Constitution affords the citizen and the press an absolute privilege for criticism of official conduct does not leave the public official without defenses against unsubstantiated opinions or deliberate misstatements. “Under our system of government, counterargument and education are the weapons available to expose these matters, not abridgment ... of free speech . . . .” Wood v. Georgia, 370 U. S. 375, 389 . The public *305 official certainly has equal if not greater access than most private citizens to media of communication. In any event, despite the possibility that some excesses and abuses may go unremedied, we must recognize that “the people of this nation have ordained in the light of history, that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, [certain] liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion and right conduct on the part of the citizens of & democracy.” Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 310 . As Mr. Justice Brandéis correctly observed, “sunlight is the most powerful of all disinfectants.” 7

For these reasons, I strongly believe that the Constitution accords citizens and press an unconditional freedom to criticize official conduct. It necessarily follows that in a case such as this, where all agree that the allegedly defamatory statements related to official conduct, the judgments for libel cannot constitutionally be sustained.

1 fully agree with the Court that the attack upon the validity of the Sedition Act of 1798, 1 Stat. 596 , “has carried the day in the court of history,” ante, at 276, and that the Act would today be declared unconstitutional. It should be pointed out, however, that the Sedition Act proscribed writings which were “false, scandalous and malicious.” (Emphasis added.) For prosecutions under the Sedition Act charging malice, see, e. g., Trial of Matthew Lyon (1798), in Wharton, State Trials of the United States (1849)^p. 333; Trial of Thomas Cooper (1800), in id., at 659 ; Trial of Anthony Haswell (1800), in id., at 684 ; Trial of James Thompson Callender (1800), in id., at 688 .

The requirement of proving actual malice or reckless disregard may, in the mind of the jury, add little to the requirement of proving falsity, a requirement which the Court recognizes not to be an adequate safeguard. The thought suggested by Mr. Justice Jackson in United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78, 92-93 , is relevant here: “[A]s a matter of either practice or philosophy I do not see how *299 we can separate an issue as to what is believed from considerations as to what is believable. The most convincing proof that one believes his statements is to show that they have been true in his experience. Likewise, that one knowingly falsified is best proved by showing that what he said happened never did happen.” See note 4, infra.

It was not until Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 , decided in 1925, that it was intimated that the freedom of speech guaranteed by *300 the First Amendment was applicable to the States by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment. Other intimations followed. See Whitney v. California, 274 U. S. 357 ; Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U. S. 380 . In 1931 Chief Justice Hughes speaking for the Court in Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359, 368 , declared: “It has been determined that' the conception of liberty under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment embraces the right of free speech.” Thus we deal with a constitutional principle enunciated less than four decades ago, and consider for the first time the application of that principle to issues arising in libel cases brought by state officials.

In most cases, as in the case at bar, there will be little difficulty in distinguishing defamatory speech relating to private conduct from that relating to official conduct. I recognize, of course, that there will be a gray area. The difficulties of applying a public-private standard are, however, certainly of a different genre from those attending the differentiation between a malicious and nonmalicious state of mind. If the constitutional standard is to be shaped by a concept of malice, the speaker takes the risk not only that the jury will inaccurately determine his state of mind but also that the jury will fail properly to apply the constitutional standard set by the elusive concept of malice. See note 2, supra.

Mr. Justice Black concurring in Barr v. Matteo, 360 U. S. 564, 577 , observed that: “The effective functioning of a free government like ours depends largely on the force of an informed public opinion. This calls for the widest possible understanding of the quality of government service rendered by all elective or appointed public officials or employees. Such an informed understanding depends, of course, on the freedom people have to applaud or to criticize the way public employees do their jobs, from the least to the most important.”

See notes 2, 4, supra.

See Freund, The Supreme Court of the United States (1949), p. 61.