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20 Roger Williams U. L. Rev. 1 (2015)

handle is hein.journals/rwulr20 and id is 1 raw text is: Articles The Promises of New York Times v. Sullivan David A. Anderson* By any measure, New York Times Co. v. Sullivanl was a monumental decision. It altered American politics, journalism, and public life, for better and worse. It freed the press from the handcuffs of archaic libel doctrines, and it removed the constraints of provable truth. It stripped away some of the legal underbrush that public officials relied on to conceal their misdeeds, and it liberated attack dogs in political campaigns. It subjected celebrities to levels of scrutiny that press agents could not prevent, and it abetted the creation of celebrity culture. Justice Brennan's opinion for the Court downplayed the case's significance. Indeed, Brennan went out of his way to make the changes wrought by the decision seem incremental.2 But many saw in the decision potentially revolutionary ideas about freedom * Fred and Emily Wulff Centennial Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School. I thank Kathleen Pritchard and Caitlyn Hubbard for their research assistance. 1. 376 U.S. 254 (1964). 2. For example, by analogizing the new actual malice rule to a like rule, which has been adopted by a number of state courts, id. at 280, and by claiming that the new rule is appropriately analogous to the protection accorded a public official when he is sued for libel by a private citizen, id. at 282. The alleged like rule was a far less protective common law rule accepted in a minority of states, and the protection accorded a public official was absolute while the actual malice rule was not. 1

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