Actual Malice

Does the First Amendment shield you from liability in state defamation cases for publishing false statements about someone else? Not entirely, but the Supreme Court's decision in the case of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) makes it very difficult for a public figure to win a libel case. In a similar way, the case of Snyder v. Phelps (2011) makes it difficult to successfully prove the intentional infliction of emotional distress when someone is speaking in a public forum about matters of public concern.

Om Podcasten

The 1787 Project is the podcast version of the lectures for Professor Justin Dyer's socially-distanced class on the U.S. Constitution at the University of Missouri. Running from August 2020 - May 2021, the course is about how the U.S. Constitution of 1787 frames the way we organize our life together as a political community. Published twice a week, the episodes explore who gets to decide big questions of public policy and why, analyze the design of our national political institutions and the contested boundaries between them, and look at the structure of constitutional rights.