Pauling v. News Syndicate Co.’s Empirical Analysis
335 F.2d 659 · 1964
Citation profile
21 federal appellate · 1 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 49 later decisions (2 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2000 · most notably Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts (1967), Rosenblatt v. Baer (1966)
21 federal appellate · 1 district · 16 state decisions — followed in 11 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan · Barr v. Matteo · Dennis v. United States · Pauling v. McElroy · Consolidated Edison Co. of New York v. United States
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 49 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“We realize that the sole point actually determined by [the New York Times] decision was that the First Amendment requires a state to recognize a “privilege for criticism of official conduct,” * * * extending to misstatements of fact, this being regarded as in some way the reciprocal of the privilege of federal officials against liability for defamatory statements “within the outer perimeter” of their duties. * * * Although the public official is the strongest case for the constitutional compulsion of such a privilege, it is questionable whether in principle the decision can be so limited. A candidate for public office would seem an inevitable candidate for extension; if a newspaper cannot constitutionally be held for defamation when it states without malice, but cannot prove, that an incumbent seeking reelection has accepted a bribe, it seems hard to justify holding it liable for further stating that the bribe was offered by his opponent. Once that extension was made, the participant in public debate on an issue of grave public concern would be next in line; thus, as applied to the case in hand, if a newspaper could not be held for printing Dr. Pauling’s charges that a member of the Atomic Energy Commission had “made dishonest, untrue and misleading statements to mislead the American people” and that a United States Senator is “the greatest enemy * * * the United States has,” as the New York Times case decided, one may wonder whether there would be sound basis for forcing it ”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“where the judge, having focussed on the point, charged the opposite of what had been requested, so that objection would have been a useless formality.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.