The Law: No Place for Seditious Libel

In the fall of 1962, Jim Garrison, the towering district attorney of Orleans Parish, was determined to cut down vice in the French Quarter of New Orleans. But the parish’s eight criminal judges refused to give their approval, which was necessary before the D.A.’s undercover agents could be paid. In a blast to the press, Garrison said the refusal raised “interesting questions about the racketeer influences on our eight vacation-minded judges.” Garrison’s statement raised something else: the judges charged him with criminal defamation, a misdemeanor that, in Louisiana, requires no jury trial. Garrison was convicted, sentenced to a $1,000 fine and four months in jail. Louisiana’s highest court upheld the conviction.

Last week the Supreme Court reversed that conviction, -thereby extending to criminal libel the same rule it laid down for civil libel in last year’s Alabama libel judgment against the New York Times: public officials cannot collect for public criticism unless a statement is “made with actual malice,” meaning full knowledge that it was false. Though concurring, Justice Hugo Black argued, as he has before, that “There is absolutely no place in this country for the old, discredited English Star Chamber law of seditious libel.”