IMHONYT v. Sullivan said that 1A denigrated the right of officials to sue for libel. SCALIA said that was WRONG.
What Scalia said was that the Bill of Rights was not enacted to change anything at all.It was created NOT to change any right but to set in concrete the established rights of the people. That is explicitly the burden of Ninth Amendment.
And where 1A refers to the freedom . . . of the press it explicitly means that freedom of the press AS IT EXISTED IN 1787 cannot be changed.
BUT EXISTING FREEDOM OF THE PRESS DID NOT INCLUDE FREEDOM TO LIBEL (or to print pornography).So altho the Warren Court asserted that the First Amendment required that officials and judges not be allowed to sue for libel, THAT COULD NOT BE TRUE.
To make the case they asserted, they would have had to refer back to PRECEDENTS PRIOR TO THE CONSTITUTION for their source. And that they did not do.
Other flaws in SULLIVAN include the fact that
- Major journalism is a cartel (the words, Associated Press alone should tell anyone that).
- That cartel has redefined the words liberal AND objective to mean in perfect accord with the perspective of the journalism cartel. The USAGE of those words is, per the cartel, strictly that journalists are never to be called liberal, and politicians are never called objective. Also, per the cartel, the definition and usage I have articulated must be denied. Even if no more plausibly than the claim that a pitcher didnt intend to hit a batter with a pitch.
- Consequently liberal officials never get libeled - and conservative ones routinely do. Denigrating the rights of public officials to sue for libel is, in practice, denigrating the rights of CONSERVATIVE officials AND THIER ADHERENTS to vindicate their reputations BY ESTABLISHING FACTS in a court of law.
- This gives liberals and objective journalists the right not only to their own opinions, BUT TO THEIR OWN FACTS. And that is Political Correctness. The Warren Court never saw the open politically correct journalism which is now routine, and it is possible to believe that even Earl Warren would have balked at reifying THAT.
No one now disputes that MORRISON V. OLSON was wrongly decided. Yet absent Scalias classic dissent, MORRISON would have been unanimous.
In 1964 the SULLIVAN decision was unanimous. But then, the Warren Court didnt have Antonin Scalia on the bench - and SULLIVAN is just as wrong as MORRISON is.
Thanks very much. BUMP!