Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment

A crucial and compelling account of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the landmark Supreme Court case that redefined libel, from the Pulitzer Prizewinning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. The First Amendment puts it this way: "e;Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."e; Yet, in 1960, a city official in Montgomery, Alabama, suedThe New York Timesfor libeland was awarded $500,000 by a local jurybecause 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 Prizewinning legal journalist Anthony Lewis. It is our best account yet of a case that redefined what newspapersand ordinary citizenscan print or say.