Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment

368 Pages·1992·1.88 MB·English

by  Anthony Lewis

Praise for ANTHONY LEWIS’S
MAKE NO LAW

“Superb … Mr. Lewis … vividly demonstrates how serious a threat
libel judgments were both to the civil rights movement and to freedom of
the press.… Make No Law is even better than Gideon’s Trumpet.”
—Walter Dellinger,
The New York Times Book Review

“Our premier teller of judicial tales for the laity—an eminently readable
interpreter of the court’s cryptic processes … Lewis enriches his tale with
an informed review of the evolution of free speech law in this
century … [and] is in a position to be authoritative where judicial historians
often are forced to reconstruct by inference and informed guesses.… Make
No Law tells the story vividly and even magisterially.”
—Washington Post Book World

“A landmark study of legal protection for freedom of
expression … Lewis tells the story with a reporter’s eye for detail. The
vignettes are priceless … crisp and illuminating. And Mr. Lewis’s access to
the Brennan files allows him exceptional insight into the process of creation
and compromise that characterizes the Court’s deliberations.… [The] tale is
essential reading—and rereading—for anyone interested in the history of
the Court or who cares about free speech.”
—Robert D. Sack, The New York Times

“[Lewis’s] clarity is a marvel, every step of the way. He … helps the
reader appreciate the moral as well as the legal problems of adjudication
between conflicting ‘good’s: protecting individuals from malice and
defending the public’s interest in free discussion of public affairs.”
—The New Yorker

“Anthony Lewis ably intertwines multiple themes—free speech, racial
justice, judicial compromise, and public-versus-private power, for example
—in recounting the story of the most important libel ruling in United States
history.… He does us a distinct service by doing so.”
—Christian Science Monitor
ALSO BY ANTHONY LEWIS

Gideon’s Trumpet
Portrait of a Decade
ANTHONY LEWIS
MAKE NO LAW

Now a columnist for The New York Times, Anthony Lewis was the Times
reporter at the Supreme Court from 1957 to 1964, and one of the cases he
covered was New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. He also taught the case at the
Harvard Law School, where he was a Lecturer on Law from 1974 to 1989. Since
1983 he has been the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University.
Mr. Lewis was born in 1927 in New York City, and attended the Horace Mann
School there and Harvard College, from which he received his B.A. in 1948. He
spent four years in the Sunday department of the Times, then three as a reporter
for the Washington Daily News, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for articles on the
federal loyalty-security program. In 1955 he returned to the Times and won a
second Pulitzer in 1963 for his reporting on the Supreme Court. In 1956–57 he
was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, studying law. At the end of 1964 he became
chief of the Times London bureau, remaining in London until 1973. In 1969 he
began writing his column.
Mr. Lewis is married and has three children and three grandchildren.

First Vintage Books Edition, September 1992

Copyright © 1991 by Anthony Lewis

All rights reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House,
Inc., New York, in 1991.

Some passages in this book appeared, in a different form,
in The New Yorker.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to The New York Times for permission to
reprint excerpts from articles by Claude Sitton from the January 4, 1960,
December 5, 1960, July 27, 1962, and May 13, 1963, issues of The New York
Times and excerpts from “Fear and Hatred Grip Birmingham” by Harrison E.
Salisbury from the April 12, 1960, issue of The New York Times. Copyright ©
1960, 1962, 1963 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, Anthony, 1927–
Make no law: the Sullivan case and the First Amendment / Anthony Lewis. Ist
Vintage Books ed. p. cm.
Originally published: New York : Random House, C1991.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78782-8
I. Libel and slander—United States. 2. Freedom of the press—
United States. 3. Press law—United States. 4. Sullivan, L. B.—
Trials, litigation, etc. 5. New York Times Company—Trials,
litigation, etc. I. Title.
[KF1266.L48 1992]
345.73’0256—dc20
[347.305256] 92-50104
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