Reckless Disregard

Until the 1960s, in order to win their cases, libel plaintiffs in the United States had to prove that the statement at issue was published, was about them, harmed their reputation, and was untrue. Thus Montgomery, Alabama Commissioner Lester Bruce Sullivan was able to easily win his libel claims against The New York Times over erroneous statements in a civil rights advertisement. But when his case was appealed to the Supreme Court, the Court invoked principles of accountability of public officials to hold that the First and Fourteenth amendments required that public officials like Sullivan also show that the defendant acted with "actual malice" - actual knowledge that a statement was untrue or with "reckless disregard" for the accuracy of the statement.

Over the next several years, the Supreme Court decided a number of cases in which it refined and clarified the new libel standards that it had imposed in Sullivan. St. Amant v. Thompson was an important part of this series in which the Court explored the contours of the Sullivan rule and established the definition of "reckless disregard" in the "actual malice" test. Yet while Sullivan and other cases in the succession of decisions that followed it have been subject of significant scholarly and legal literature, the St. Amant case, once called "the most important of the recent Supreme Court libel decisions," has been comparatively ignored. Eric Robinson's analysis of the case and its ramifications fills this gap. Robinson's study includes a deft examination of the background of the legal proceedings as well as the social and political situation in which it occurred. His analysis of how the Supreme Court dealt with the case includes its internal deliberations and discussions, shedding new light on the favorable ruling for St. Amant which forever changed the U.S. libel law.