NYT: Justice Thomas makes a move against freedom of the press.

[Grasswire2]

[link:https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/us/politics/clarence-thomas-first-amendment-libel.html|

WASHINGTON — Justice Clarence Thomas on Tuesday called for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 ruling interpreting the First Amendment to make it hard for public officials to prevail in libel suits.

He said the decision had no basis in the Constitution as it was understood by the people who drafted and ratified it.

“New York Times and the court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” Justice Thomas wrote.

[dalton99a]

1. The most destructive useful-idiot judge ever.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

6. Careful.

We have yet to see what Schlitz Kavanaugh has up his sleeve.

[2naSalit]

2. Oh no you f'ing don't MF!

That is all.

[Iliyah]

3. Truth will always prevail over lies.

WW2. Over a 100 million died because Nazis who believed that GAWD favored them and now it has rear it's hateful head again.


Why must humans kill each other.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Sleeper. He was all about destroying stare decisis.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. To whom, exactly is he pandering ?

SCOTUS is not in the habit of reviewing decades' old cases just because someone thinks they should. No one is currently challenging the established case law here.

Besides, Clarence Thomas cannot possibly pretend to know WHAT the framers were thinking. And he would neither understand nor recognize constitutional construction if it was gift-wrapped and shoved up his fat ass.

[unblock]

7. Really bizarre to claim the founders didn't want the press to take public people to task

In fact, skewering public people was nearly the entire point of putting freedom of the press in the first amendment. It was meant as a check on their power, particularly in the case of politicians.

Very difficult to argue the courts overstepped their authority by taking someone's celebrity status into account when it comes to defamation cases. It would seem to be relevant that if the person claiming to be a victim of bad press knowingly sought publicity.

[htuttle]

8. Apparently, he's never heard of John Peter Zenger

http://www.ushistory.org/us/7c.asp

Though it happened before the US was founded (as the US), back in 1735, Zenger v New York was probably the first libel trial against a free press in North America.

Zenger was an editor/printer (there wasn't much distinction back then), and got sued by the governor of New York for libel.

His trial was one of the first times the legal argument that "the truth is a defense against libel," was made in court, and he won.

So it was very likely on the minds of the founders.

[unblock]

9. Some of the allegations are interesting and rather thin

Constitutional issues aside, the allegations are really thin.

The "victim" wasn't mentioned, but took it personally that the ad attacked police policies and actions because he was the police commissioner.

Personally, when I hear someone complain about police policy or actions, I don't particularly think of the police commissioner specifically. It might be a committe or law or officer or the governor or someone else responsible. In any event, attacking an action or policy is different from attacking the person who took that action or implemented that policy.

Second, many of the factual errors could hardly be damaging. So mlk was arrested only 4 times instead of 7. Is that distinction materially damaging to the police commissioner?


Frankly I'm surprised the Supreme Court picked this case at all. Typically, the wait for a "clean" case that crystallize the issues, and this one seems to have trial-level problems.

[StTimofEdenRoc]

10. How would FOX and other right wing propaganda outlets survive such a revision in the law?

[oasis]

11. That dumb piece of shit thinks he knows what was "understood" by

some of the smartest people of their time.

[no_hypocrisy]

12. Besides the point that Thomas is no legal scholar,

expect this to backfire if it ever came to the High Court while he's still a sitting Justice.

Thomas will likely continue his tradition of not asking a single question during Arguments.

[Kentonio]

13. Wonder who has been lobbying him