New York Times v. Sullivan: List 1

On March 29, 1960, The New York Times ran an ad to defend Martin Luther King Jr. from an Alabama perjury indictment. To solicit funds, the ad included details of police actions against participants in a civil rights demonstration. In response, Montgomery Commissioner L.B. Sullivan filed a libel suit. The Supreme Court ruled that, unless the public figure can prove actual malice, the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press. The unanimous opinion was written by Justice William Brennan. Read the full text here.

This list covers vocabulary in paragraphs 1-22 of the opinion.
15 words 8 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. libel
    a false and malicious publication
    We are required in this case to determine for the first time the extent to which the constitutional protections for speech and press limit a State's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.
  2. impute
    attribute to a cause or source
    He further claimed that the paragraph would be read as imputing to the police, and hence to him, the padlocking of the dining hall in order to starve the students into submission.
  3. implicate
    bring into intimate and incriminating connection
    Although Dr. King's home had, in fact, been bombed twice when his wife and child were there, both of these occasions antedated respondent's tenure as Commissioner, and the police were not only not implicated in the bombings, but had made every effort to apprehend those who were.
  4. pecuniary
    relating to or involving money
    Respondent made no effort to prove that he suffered actual pecuniary loss as a result of the alleged libel.
  5. retraction
    a disavowal or taking back of a previous assertion
    Each of the individual petitioners testified that he had not authorized the use of his name, and that he had been unaware of its use until receipt of respondent's demand for a retraction.
  6. per se
    with respect to its inherent nature
    The trial judge submitted the case to the jury under instructions that the statements in the advertisement were "libelous per se," and were not privileged, so that petitioners might be held liable if the jury found that they had published the advertisement and that the statements were made "of and concerning" respondent.
  7. privileged
    not subject to usual rules or penalties
    The trial judge submitted the case to the jury under instructions that the statements in the advertisement were "libelous per se," and were not privileged, so that petitioners might be held liable if the jury found that they had published the advertisement and that the statements were made "of and concerning" respondent.
  8. contempt
    lack of respect accompanied by a feeling of intense dislike
    Under Alabama law, as applied in this case, a publication is "libelous per se" if the words "tend to injure a person...in his reputation" or to "bring him into public contempt"; the trial court stated that the standard was met if the words are such as to "injure him in his public office, or impute misconduct to him in his office, or want of official integrity, or want of fidelity to a public trust...."
  9. forfeit
    lose the right to or lose by some error, offense, or crime
    To avoid placing such a handicap upon the freedoms of expression, we hold that, if the allegedly libelous statements would otherwise be constitutionally protected from the present judgment, they do not forfeit that protection because they were published in the form of a paid advertisement.
  10. mitigation
    the action of lessening in severity or intensity
    Good motives and belief in truth do not negate an inference of malice, but are relevant only in mitigation of punitive damages if the jury chooses to accord them weight.
  11. damages
    a sum of money paid in compensation for loss or injury
    Good motives and belief in truth do not negate an inference of malice, but are relevant only in mitigation of punitive damages if the jury chooses to accord them weight.
  12. liability
    an obligation to pay money to another party
    The question before us is whether this rule of liability, as applied to an action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct, abridges the freedom of speech and of the press that is guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
  13. epithet
    a defamatory or abusive word or phrase
    In deciding the question now, we are compelled by neither precedent nor policy to give any more weight to the epithet "libel" than we have to other "mere labels" of state law.
  14. repression
    control by holding down
    Like insurrection, contempt, advocacy of unlawful acts, breach of the peace, obscenity, solicitation of legal business, and the various other formulae for the repression of expression that have been challenged in this Court, libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations.
  15. immunity
    the quality of being unaffected by something
    Like insurrection, contempt, advocacy of unlawful acts, breach of the peace, obscenity, solicitation of legal business, and the various other formulae for the repression of expression that have been challenged in this Court, libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations.
Created on Wed Jun 04 12:41:51 EDT 2025 (updated Wed Jun 04 14:09:40 EDT 2025)

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