Posted on 04/23/2020 2:08:36 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
U.S. Supreme Court
Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1 (1945)
Associated Press v. United States
No. 57
Argued December 5, 6, 1944
Decided June 18, 1945*
326 U.S. 1
Syllabus
By-laws of the Associated Press, a cooperative association engaged in gathering and distributing news in interstate and foreign commerce, prohibited service of AP news to nonmembers, prohibited members from furnishing spontaneous news to nonmembers, and empowered members to block membership applications of competitors. A contract between AP and a Canadian press association obligated both to furnish news exclusively to each other. Charging, inter alia, that the bylaws and the contract violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Government sought an injunction against AP and member publishers. Upon the Government's motion, the District Court rendered summary judgment.
Held:
1. The bylaws and the contract, together with the admitted facts, justified summary judgment. Rule 56 of the Rules of Civil Procedure. P. 326 U. S. 5.
2. Publishers charged with violating the Sherman Act are subject, no less than others, to the summary judgment procedure. P. 326 U. S. 7.
3. The bylaws, on their face, constitute restraints of trade and violate the Sherman Act. P. 326 U. S. 12.
(a) That AP had not achieved a complete monopoly is irrelevant. P. 326 U. S. 12.
Page 326 U. S. 2
(b) Trade in news carried on among the States is interstate commerce. P. 326 U. S. 14.
© The fact that AP's activities are cooperative does not render the Sherman Act inapplicable. P. 326 U. S. 14.
(d) Although true in a general sense that an owner of property may dispose of it as he pleases, he can not go beyond the exercise of that right and, by contracts or combinations, express or implied, unduly hinder or obstruct the free flow of interstate commerce. P. 326 U. S. 15.
(e) The fact that there are other news agencies which sell news, and that AP's reports are not "indispensable," can give AP's restrictive bylaws no exemption under the Sherman Act. P. 326 U. S. 17.
(f) The result here does not involve an application of the "public utility" concept to the newspaper business. P. 326 U. S. 19.
(g) Arrangements or combinations designed to stifle competition can not be immunized through a membership device which would accomplish that purpose. P. 326 U. S. 19.
(h) Application of the Sherman Act to a combination of publishers to restrain trade in news does not abridge the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment. Pp. 326 U. S. 19-20.
4. The decree of the District Court, interpreted as meaning that AP news is to be furnished to competitors of members without discrimination through bylaws controlling membership or otherwise, is not vague and indefinite, and is approved. P. 326 U. S. 21.
5. The District Court did not err in refusing to hold as a violation of the Sherman Act standing alone (1) the bylaws provision forbidding service of AP news to nonmembers, (2) the bylaws provision forbidding AP members from furnishing spontaneous news to nonmembers, or (3) the Canadian press contract; and the court was justified in enjoining their observance temporarily pending AP's abandonment of the bylaws provision empowering members to block membership applications of competitors. P. 326 U. S. 21.
6. The fashioning of a decree in an antitrust case, to prevent future violations and eradicate existing evils, rests largely in the discretion of the trial court. P. 326 U. S. 22.
7. The case having been presented on the narrow issues arising out of undisputed facts, it cannot be said that the District Court's decree should have been broader, and, if the decree in its present form should prove inadequate to prevent further discriminatory trade restraints against nonmember newspapers, the District Court's retention of jurisdiction of the cause will enable it to take appropriate action. P. 326 U. S. 22.
52 F. Supp. 362, affirmed.
Page 326 U. S. 3
Appeals from a decree of a district court of three judges in a suit by the United States to enjoin alleged violations of the Sherman Act.
I apologize for a lack of patience with sophistry. I just can’t be bothered.
My reaction is, “So what?” Not dismissively, but genuinely curious.
I think his analysis might bear on my ruminations in Reply #20.
Maybe . . .
I like that because it illustrates there are two "rights" of citizens at stake here: 1) Freedom of Public Discourse; and 2) Justice for someone hurting a person's Reputation.
And these rights go together hand and glove. For slander is the unjust use of free Public Discourse to harm a Person or group.
Exhibits. . .
Other slanderers unchecked: Schiff, Pelosi, Schumer, Ford, NYTimes, Washington Post, CNN.
* * * *
Yes, yes! And did Ben Franklin, John Adams, or Thomas Jefferson foresee the internet, jet travel, mobile phones, and undersea fiberoptic cables?
Likely not :- )
Would they have anticipated Hollywood, Theme Parks, satellite and fiberoptic cable service?
Would they have anticipated that one media company owner, Bloomberg, would be worth $55 billion -- an amount equal to the USA GDP in 1933 with a population of 125 million (31 times that of 4 million in 1787)?
Would they have calculate that media would become a key tool of oligarchs and the bureaucratic State to circumvent the will of the People?
Probably not. But they would have been surely outraged at this turn of events and would instantly know it as a great danger to the free republic they set up.
BTW, I edited and excerpted parts of Bastiat's The Law (English translation) and put it in a Word Document. The Law remains the simplest way to understand Liberty and the human society is supposed to work.
Here is for download.
Thanks poconopundit.
In Justice Thomas’s view, the First Amendment did nothing to limit the authority of states to protect the reputations of their citizens and leaders as they saw fit. When the First Amendment was ratified, he wrote, many states made it quite easy to sue for libel in civil actions and to prosecute libel as a crime. That was, he wrote, as it should be.Mark Steyn is emphatic that it’s too easy to sue for libel in Britain.“We did not begin meddling in this area until 1964, nearly 175 years after the First Amendment was ratified,” Justice Thomas wrote of the Sullivan decision. “The states are perfectly capable of striking an acceptable balance between encouraging robust public discourse and providing a meaningful remedy for reputational harm.” - Justice Thomas, quoted in the New York Times.
Imagine what a California legislature could do to FR, given a free hand! JimRob would be in jail!
And the problem would be nationwide, since web sites are
nationwide_worldwide_Jurisdiction shopping could be devastating to freedom of speech and press.
The country would IMHO be a lot better off with a libel law written by a Republican Congress. Democrats like Sullivan just as it is - nominally nonpartisan, actually devastatingly partisan against “conservatives.”
Thank you for doing the legwork on that and making it available for download, poconopundit! Much appreciated...
Thanks, rlmorel. I’d be interested to hear your reaction to Bastiat’s The Law once you’ve had a chance to read some of it.
Cheers.
Thank you. Very interesting conversation here. And very important for those of us who care to really understand .
It was a magnificent soapbox/platform, quite possibly the finest ever built. It had adequate ramps for the physically and mentally handicapped. The view was spectacular. You could see/speak for miles and miles, even to the other side of the world. You could speak with family, friend and foe. But for some, contemplating the enormity of things big and small, a shadowy figure would come up, quickly slip a noose around our neck and open the trap door. How evil can you get?
Precisely. A serious effort at objectivity must begin, not with the assumption that you are objective, but with the contrary, and counterintuitive, assumption that you are not objective. Assuming that you are objective, then testing to see if you are, will always result in an (almost inevitably false) positive result. Therefore the individual journalist within the “objective journalism” cartel is not actually trying to be objective. What his actual objective is, and must be, is consensus. Falling outside the consensus of the cartel, and staying there, is the recipe for ejection from the cartel. That is the way to get called “not a journalist, not objective.” By all members of the cartel.One problem is that far too many journalists are too damn stupid to know what questions to ask.The upshot is that, in the context of journalism, the meaning of “objective” is inverted from “not limited in POV” to limited to being simpatico with the cartel. Precisely the opposite of what a dictionary might say. The behavior of the cartel towards other political labels is similar - “liberal” or “progressive” also mean "simpatico with the cartel” rather than “favoring liberty” or “believing in progress of, by, and for society.” Both of which are values promoted by the Constitution. And neither of which are promoted by the cartel. Other than in the advertisements, of course . . .
“Conservative” is also redefined by the cartel from “opposing gratuitous changes to the way the Constitution is understood and implemented" to, “opposing the cartel's consensus."
A few weeks ago I heard Cuomo’s press conference where he stated flatly that the state had 14,000 ventilators in storage, and that he needed 40,000, and that only 900 were in use. Nobody asked him about this for 3 days - until the 3rd day a ‘journalist’ said “there are reports that the state has 14,000 ventilators in storage what can you say about that”.
Stupidity has nothing to do with it. What the “objective journalists” all know is that Cuomo is a “liberal” - and that persistently challenging the behavior of a “liberal” will get you read out of the consensus of “objective journalists.” ”Stupidity,” from that POV, is expressing any interest at all,ever, in those 14,000 ventilators.
Some Republican official must sue for libel in the teeth of Sullivan.Outstanding info that I was not cognizant of…
If we can get one more Constitutionalist on the court and have a 6-3 majority (at least protection against another Chief Justice betrayal) the possibilities for a wide range laws, regulations, and unConstitutional prior SCOTUS rulings to be reversed is tantalizing…
Obviously that “6-3” majority has been in place for a bit now.IMHO the issue would be how to craft a remedy which would be hard to criticize effectively.
Because the SCOTUS majority is obviously in a delicate position.It would seem that SCOTUS needs a way to defang Sullivan without explicitly overturning it. For example, there should be some way of making the standard of proof of “actual malice” very easy to meet. Especially, I would say, WRT the wire services and the membership of the AP, which has systematically functioned as a way of “passing the buck” and diluting responsibility among so many entities as to make “responsibility” a quaint concept.
Which is why I assert that the libel suit SCOTUS gets must name “the Associated Press and each of its members, joint and several liability” as defendants. Fox News would easily slip that noose because it has been systematically critical of “the media.”
Defanging Sullivan would, however, not affect the “the dog that didn’t bark” issue. I don’t see how you can sue someone for not reporting, say, the Jussie Smollette verdict as emphatically as they reported Mr. Smollette’s slanderous attack on Republicans. I say, “Republicans,” because any member of a minority who dares confront the lies of “the media” instantly becomes an “honorary” Republican. And white people who are Democrats are treated as if “white” were not a pejorative as it pertains to them.
Nice reminder...
I guess, in April 2020, I still retained a smidgeon of optimism...
The 6-3 SCOTUS takes its final exam, IMHO, with the Roe v Wade case...
We lose that and we’d need a 9-0 court to give us a remote possibility of getting some of our chains struck off...
The tree will definitely need watering, IMHO...
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