Earlier this year I read an interview with Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creative duo behind the hit animated comedy South Park, in conjunction with their new Broadway play The Book of Mormon. What struck me was one of them saying that in the episode of South Park in which they lambasted the cult of Scientology, they had wanted to say that Tom Cruise is in the closet. Their lawyer advised them that Cruise could sue them for defamation, so instead they put the cartoon version of Tom Cruise in a literal closet that he refused to come out of. The result was laugh-out-loud comedic gold, but it highlights one of my major peeves about legal causes of action, which is the law of defamation.
Defamation is a cause of action under which a plaintiff can sue a defendant for damage to his reputation. In For a New Liberty, Murray Rothbard wrote that he believed defamation law should be abolished, because a person’s reputation exists in the brains of other people and the plaintiff has no property right in other people’s minds. My concern is broader; I believe that defamation law scares people away from making statements that might offend those among us with the money to hire lawyers. This fear of being sued for defamation chills people's ability to say what they want. It scares them away from criticizing others, even when the criticism might be justified and deserved.
This danger is often poignant in the case of such artistic representations as South Park, which makes deep, meaningful social commentary by making jokes, often offensive ones, directed at people who could easily take offense and who generally have money. The strange thing is that the first amendment has a clause that guarantees freedom of speech. Why isn't the First Amendment regarded as making charges of defamation unconstitutional?
There is a larger and a smaller answer. The larger answer is that the members of the Supreme Court, even the supposedly “textualist” and “originalist” conservatives, do not take the words of the Constitution literally. They make interpretations that twist and mangle it into something that looks like what they want, something that deforms the meaning of the words on paper, written by the Founders. The smaller, more specific answer is that the Supreme Court has grappled with the conflict between free speech and defamation, and has chosen a middle ground that tries reconciles the two.
Why isn't the First Amendment regarded as making charges of defamation unconstitutional?
In the landmark case of New York Times v.Sullivan (1964), an overseer of Southern police officers, sued the Times and members of the civil rights movement under a defamation theory, accusing them of damaging the policemen’s reputation by publishing an ad indicating that the police had committed crimes against demonstrators. Instead of holding defamation unconstitutional, the Supreme Court found for the defendants, holding that when public officials assert defamation they must prove “actual malice,” meaning that the defendant knew his statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for truth. This is a much higher standard than the “negligence” requirement that applies to defamation against private individuals on matters of public concern or the mere “publication” requirement that applies to defamation by private citizens on a matter of private concern. However, after Sullivan the Supreme Court expanded the actual malice rule to cover “public figures” as well as public officials, so most celebrities, such Tom Cruise, must prove actual malice.
Actual malice was designed to prevent censorship. I am sure that the Court believed it was being quite generous by creating such a high barrier to recovery. But because defamation continued to exist, the fear of being sued and the expense of litigation remain a serious impediment to American free speech and to our ability to criticize people of political and social importance. Speaking freely about the flaws (real or alleged) of our political and cultural leadership is a basic requirement for democracy to function.
A more recent important case is Hustler Magazine & Larry Flynt v.Jerry Falwell, a 1988 United States Supreme Court case in which evangelist Jerry Falwell sued a pornographic magazine for printing a joke that accused him of having sex with his mother. The accusation was obviously a joke that no one could take seriously. It was also clearly an example of the use of charges of defamation to censor criticism and take revenge against people who offend you. The jury found against Falwell on his libel claim, but found against Hustler on the “intentional infliction of emotional distress” claim, which is a somewhat similar cause of action that is also used to censor criticism and punish offensive behavior. The jury awarded substantial monetary damages. The Supreme Court, however, found in favor of the magazine on the “IIED” (as lawyers call it) claim, citing the need to protect the American tradition of political satire cartoons, and held that the New York Times v.Sullivan “actual malice” standard for defamation against public figures should also be used in cases involved intentional infliction of emotional distress claims against public figures, in order to protect free speech and create breathing room for vigorous debate. Regarding the right to be offensive towards other people, the court said that offensive speech is protected by the First Amendment.
But again, the Court refused to see the truth sitting right under its nose, which is that the only real purpose of claims of defamation (or intentional infliction of emotion distress claims alleged against plaintiffs because of what they say or write) is to censor speech; and this violates the first amendment. The law of defamation has no place in a society that believes in intellectual freedom for all citizens. We libertarians are basically the only group of people in America who say that the emperor has no clothes and who criticize governmental mistakes that modern-liberals and conservatives ignore or condone. Defamation is an obvious abuse of the law and of the state’s coercive power to repress independent thinking, and we should all get angry about it.
