Customer Reviews

Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment

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As with Gideon's Trumpet, Anthony Lewis (long time New York times columnist who went to Harvard Law so that he could better report on the Supreme Court) manages to explain a complex legal decision, set the decision against its historical background, explain the legal history of the Court's reasoning, and give cogent examples of how the case has been applied--all in a very readable book.

In the early 60's, the struggle for racial justice in the south had reached the boiling point. Bull Connor was using his dogs and hoses against non-violent blacks marching in the streets, and Alabama expelled several university students for sitting in at a restaurant. Martin Luther King had been arrested for tax fraud by the State of Alabama--claiming that SCLC funds had been diverted for his personal use (all charges were eventually dropped). The media was covering these events nationally (and increasingly internationally).

To raise some money, some southern ministers placed an ad in the New York Times, describing some of these events, and asking for money to defend Dr. King against the false charges.

A member of the Birmingham City Council, in a well orchestrated attempt to shut down northern media coverage, sued the New York Times for lible, and won a $500,000 verdict in state court.

These events set the stage for the now famous decision by the United States Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan.

While the decision was unanimous (at least in the result), Lewis digs deeper, and describes the process by which the judges meshed often incompatible views into a coherent rule of law, which continues to be applied today (although, not always as the Court intended).

The intended and unintended consequences which flowed from Sullivan form the third strand of Lewis' book, and are in themselves instructive, but probably not as interesting (they are often both obscure and dated) as those parts of the book (most of it) which focus on the history.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in today's media, the history of the contitution, how the Supreme Court works, or the history of the Civil Rights movement.

As with Gideon's Trumpet, Anthony Lewis (long time New York times columnist who went to Harvard Law so that he could better report on the Supreme Court) manages to explain a complex legal decision, set the decision against its historical background, explain the legal history of the Court's reasoning, and give cogent examples of how the case has been applied--all in a very readable book.

In the early 60's, the struggle for racial justice in the south had reached the boiling point. Bull Connor was using his dogs and hoses against non-violent blacks marching in the streets, and Alabama expelled several university students for sitting in at a restaurant. Martin Luther King had been arrested for tax fraud by the State of Alabama--claiming that SCLC funds had been diverted for his personal use (all charges were eventually dropped). The media was covering these events nationally (and increasingly internationally).

To raise some money, some southern ministers placed an ad in the New York Times, describing some of these events, and asking for money to defend Dr. King against the false charges.

A member of the Birmingham City Council, in a well orchestrated attempt to shut down northern media coverage, sued the New York Times for lible, and won a $500,000 verdict in state court.

These events set the stage for the now famous decision by the United States Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan.

While the decision was unanimous (at least in the result), Lewis digs deeper, and describes the process by which the judges meshed often incompatible views into a coherent rule of law, which continues to be applied today (although, not always as the Court intended).

The intended and unintended consequences which flowed from Sullivan form the third strand of Lewis' book, and are in themselves instructive, but probably not as interesting (they are often both obscure and dated) as those parts of the book (most of it) which focus on the history.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in today's media, the history of the contitution, how the Supreme Court works, or the history of the Civil Rights movement.

In "Make No Law" Lewis brilliantly chronicles the evolution of freedom of speech as American courts strive to interpret the broad language of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. The courts' interpretation of the First Amendment within Founding Father James Madison's broad protection by "absolute immunity" for criticism is contrasted with the British premise that truth is NOT a defense for libel and if an individual is defamed they do NOT have to demonstrate damages to be awarded huge amounts of money. Lewis engagingly recounts the courts' struggle to ensure that plaintiffs with frivolous loss of reputation claims do not intimidate the whistleblower and the news reporter into the silence of self-censorship through vivid examples of individuals ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a simple "letter to the editor" and the incredible saga of the landmark Supreme Court case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which could have bankrupt the New York Times into oblivion in 1964. The courts must be ever wary that the threat of multi-million dollar judgments do not become mightier than the pen. After reading "Make No Law," the fight for Internet free speech detailed in another monograph, "Be Careful Who You SLAPP," will come into sharp focus as the tragic miscarriage of justice in modern times. Yet, hope remains for the American legal system. Read "Make No Law" and be a proud optimist. And never stop striving for "liberty and justice for all"!

Anthony Lewis uses sophisticated writing chronically exhibiting the landmark decision of Supreme Court: New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. In 1960, the case started with a full-page ad in New York Times which describes the ill treatment Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. received in Alabama, where was part of a campaign to destroy Dr. King's efforts on stopping racial segregation, and strives for black voting rights. L. B. Sullivan, the Montgomery City commissioner filed a libel action against the newspaper and the four black ministers, who were listed as endorsers of the ad. Because one of the paragraphs claims an accusation against Alabama police, Sullivan believed it defamed him personally. The entire case was revolving around the central ideal of First Amendment-freedom of speech. However, Lewis's libertarian ideology of believing absolute free expression has influenced his objective view. "Only unrestrained press can efficiently expose the deceptions of government", was the original purpose of press according to our founding fathers, though, many female citizens may be opposed to his point of view on unrestrained speech due to problem of obscenity in press the unlimited freedom creates. Feminine activists believe it denies sexual equality. Despite the personal opinions in this book, Lewis's detail descriptions on our Judiciary system and the endeavors on defending the true meaning of First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or the press", have made us to realize the honorable spirit that was drafted inside the Constitution as well as essence of two-hundred American democracy.

There is little to add to the other reviews. Lewis writes well, on a important enough subject. He idealizes the court's creation of, and support for, free speech doctrine. The importance of the Sullivan case is the crux of the book. Justic Goldberg summed up the result: "A public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with 'actual malice'--that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." It was, according to Lewis, a victory for free speech and important component in the development of free speech doctrine.
The book is a good read for those interested in free speech issues, the history of which are supremely important in understanding the nature and danger of threats to freedom.

This book was one reason why I took up the study of law at 50. Anthony Lewis begins with a Supreme Court case and ends up reviewing this country's long experience of free speech. The premise is simple enough: Sullivan v. New York Times, which started as a 1960 civil rights case, involving a defamation lawsuit in Alabama, and ending up as a pivotal Supreme Court ruling on freedom of speech and of the press. The legal importance of the case alone justifies Mr. Lewis' interest.

However, Mr. Lewis' real contribution, at least to me, are in the background chapters to the case, in which he goes back to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and tells of the ongoing tension between free speech and official power. His discussion of the WWI wartime legislation and its aftermath -- a period very much like the post-9/11 era in its attempts to legislate security -- is central to the book.

It is here that he acquaints us with the dissents by Justices Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, dissents in freedom-of-speech cases that didn't prevail in that time but burn brightly ever since. One Brandeis quote suffices: "Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men ... no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present."

Mr. Lewis rightly regards these jurists with awe. Certainly their words are as noble as anything the Founding Fathers wrote on the nature of our liberties. If patriotism means an appreciation of the depth, timelessness and principle of our liberties, then you'll find much of that here.

I have read Anthony Lewis' earlier, arguably more famous book, Gideon's Trumpet, another work of reverence to our legal system, and would still put Make No Law ahead of it, though I also recommend Gideon's Trumpet as well. But this book did reinforce my own appreciation for this country's liberties and I cannot recommend it more highly.

New York Times v. Sullivan was a landmark case that reaffirms our society's commitment to freedom of the press. Simultaneously, however, the Sullivan case recognized limits upon the media's power to publish defamatory statements and then cloak themselves in the First Amendment. Mr. Lewis does a fine job of explaining the tensions that underlie the First Amendment.

A readable account of the libel case that dramatically defined and expanded the scope of press freedom. It's difficult to remember that it was only in the 1960's that these ideas were settled by the Supreme Court. Lewis backgrounds the history of press freedom, or rather government attempts to bridle it by various sedition acts that seemed to appear each generation [Ashcroft's current attempts to inhibit 1st Amendment rights is only the latest in a long series] The last chapters of the book cover libel cases through 1991 when the book went to press. The short section on the Pentagon Papers case is particularly timely.

<<<Presidents have used the needs of national security in [an age of nuclear weapons] to justify cloaking more and more of the vital business of government in secrecy. The intelligence agencies spend billions of dollars every year, but the public is not allowed to know the amount or the justifications for it... The price of all this secrecy is one that Madison understood -- the growth of autocracy.... Americans are far too bewitched by the presidency and its ever-growing claims that national security demands secret government. The public resents the press when it tries to hold the President accountable on issues of war and peace, as Madison and h is colleagues intended the press to do.>>>

"Make No Law" is a wonderful exploration of the Sullivan libel case, which pitted segregationists in 1960s Deep South against the New York Times. The description of how white judges, police and juries worked together to punish civil rights workers was truly frightening. The story of how the Times was accused of libel for having run an ad that was all but true showed how easy it was for governments to threaten those with opinions they did not like. A section discussing the long and evolving understanding of a free press - from English Common law through the controversial Sedition Acts -- was eye-opening. The book continued with the drama of bringing the case to the Supreme Court case and the case's aftermath - both positive and negative.

I came away from the book with a new appreciation for the complex nature of the law. Freedom of speech was changing, at the time the US Constitution was written, from an idea of freedom from prior restraint, toward the ability to also published what one pleased, without threat of punishment. The evolving understanding of the law by justices like Holmes and Brandeis gave a different perspective to the idea that the best interpretation is that of the Founders. The unintended consequences of the Sullivan ruling - libel cases are too often used to punishment truth tellers -- show that the work of the Court on this issue is not yet complete

Only one chapter did not hold my interest - the one on the behind-the-scenes deliberations of the Supreme Court. Beyond that, it was fascinating to watch the interplay between common law, present experience and long-held American ideals of free government - as they played out against the backdrop of desperate human drama in one of the most important Supreme Court cases in recent memory. A pleasure and treasure.

Its okay. I had to get this book for my Communications Law class. It reads easier than most law books