Amid the historic events of last weekend, one potentially significant legal development went largely overlooked.

Political commentators have rightly been fixated on the dire fate of President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Verdict A Florida judge has ruled that former President Donald Trump Defamation lawsuit The lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize committee is likely to proceed.

This case deserves more commentary than it has received so far. (Related article: Gabriel Nadales: Harris could help unite the country if she promises to drop charges against Trump)

Trump is suing the Pulitzer Prize committee 2022 Statement It reaffirmed the committee's earlier decision to award prizes to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their reporting on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Trump argues that the statement is legally defamatory because it implies the accuracy of the Times' and The Washington Post's reporting. Special Counsel Robert Mueller “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in any election interference activities.”

The Pulitzer team sought to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that statements defending the prize were merely opinions and could not be sued for defamation.

The judge disagreed, finding that Pulitzer's comments were not pure opinion, but “mixed” opinion – opinion related to facts that Pulitzer's comments alluded to but did not state. Such mixed opinion can be actionable under US libel law.

It is one thing to express an opinion that someone is cheating; it is another to express such an opinion and then say, in effect, “And if you knew what I know, you would agree.” What the Pulitzer Prize committee did was essentially do that by issuing a statement defending the prize and claiming that the report had been reviewed by experts they hired, but providing no further information.

This case is significant for two reasons: First, there is a chance that Trump will win.

Under current constitutional standards, it would be extremely difficult, almost impossible, for a “public figure” like Trump to win a defamation lawsuit. New York Times v. Sullivan Subsequent cases have held that to succeed in a defamation lawsuit, a public figure must prove “actual malice” — in other words, that the defendant knew the defamatory statements were false or at least acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

This is very hard for news organizations to prove, because they can always claim they were on a tight deadline and believed their story was true at the time, but in this case, the Pulitzer Prize committee stood by the original award and the reporting that awarded it, even after a thorough Justice Department investigation did not prove that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

The court will likely find that even under the “actual malice” standard here, knowledge of falsehoods or reckless disregard for the truth was necessary for Trump to win.

Second, and more importantly, if the case proceeds, it could give the courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, the opportunity to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, a possibility Trump has hinted at. His TruthSocial post Commenting on the ruling, Trump said the judge “did not allow Pulitzer to hide behind the outdated Times v. Sullivan case of a bygone era, before the media entered the final stages of Trump Derangement Syndrome and became radicalized and woke.”

Trump has a point. Today's news media is far more openly partisan and unprincipled than it was in the 1960s, when New York Times v. Sullivan was decided. That's why the hysterical reporting of the Trump era, often based on anonymous sources, is so routinely aimed at discrediting Trump among the public.

The Sullivan Court thought that the actual malice standard protected democracy by protecting the vigorous public debate that voters need to choose who will govern them. In practice, however, the standard impedes reasonable self-governance. It allows the media to avoid reporting defamatory and false stories about public officials and candidates for office, thereby giving them the power to influence election outcomes by creating public dislike for candidates they do not support.

Indeed, this was the very purpose of the “Russian collusion” story in the 2016 election. Allowing partisans and the media to trick voters into voting against a candidate based on slanderous misinformation does nothing for “democracy” – the right of citizens to truly informed consent.

There's another issue in New York Times v. Sullivan that former President Trump did not address in his comments: The Sullivan court argued that by imposing an “actual malice” standard, it was fulfilling the requirements of the First Amendment's protection of “freedom of the press.”

But in reality, the “actual malice” test has no basis in the original understanding of the First Amendment or in the American legal tradition that dominated until the mid-20th century.^Number In the 19th century, the American Constitution provided for the freedom of libel. The Founding Fathers had a simpler and more rational understanding of libel, i.e., false and slanderous allegations, which they held to be completely unprotected by “freedom of speech.” (For example, Judge Joseph Story's Dexter v. Speer) Whether or not the victim of defamation is a public figure, it is rather a harmful abuse of that freedom and a violation of the rights of others and is therefore an action that should be properly actioned.

In short, New York Times v. Sullivan was another example of the unwarranted judicial activism for which the Warren Court was notorious in the 1960s. Trump's lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize committee therefore has implications beyond any natural concern for his own reputation.

This may be a new opportunity for a modern Supreme Court to clean up the legacy of the Warren Court, restore the Constitution to its original meaning, and reinstate defamation standards that support truthful, civil, and rational public debate.

Carson Holloway is a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute's American Way of Life Center.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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