Make No Law
The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group · Print & ebook · September 1, 1992
A crucial and compelling account of New York Times Co. v.
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- Who it’s for
- A readable account of how one libel case reshaped the boundaries of press freedom.
- Themes
- Freedom of speech and the press, Libel law, Civil rights protests
- Genres
- Defamation & Libel Law, Constitutional Law, Civil Rights
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Start with this bookAbout this book
A crucial and compelling account of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case that redefined libel, from the Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. The First Amendment puts it this way: "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
Continue reading
Yet, in 1960, a city official in Montgomery, Alabama, sued The New York Times for libel—and was awarded $500,000 by a local jury—because the paper had published an ad critical of Montgomery's brutal response to civil rights protests. The centuries of legal precedent behind the Sullivan case and the U.S. Supreme Court's historic reversal of the original verdict are expertly chronicled in this gripping and wonderfully readable book by the Pulitzer Prize Pulitzer Prize–winning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. It is our best account yet of a case that redefined what newspapers—and ordinary citizens—can print or say.
Speech Under Pressure
A readable account of how one libel case reshaped the boundaries of press freedom.
Come here for
- The collision of civil rights protest, local power, and newspaper speech
- A landmark Supreme Court case with lasting First Amendment stakes
Expect
- Legal history told by a journalist, not a casebook
- A layered account of precedent and a historic reversal
Where it sits
| Defamation & Libel Law | 76% |
|---|---|
| Constitutional Law | 56% |
| Civil Rights | 39% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- 20th-Century America
- Constitutional Law
- Civil Rights
- Authors
- Anthony Lewis
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- September 1, 1992
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Freedom of speech and the press · Libel law · Civil rights protests
- Reading lane
- 20th-Century America