NY Times v. Sullivan

Today in Constitutional law class we were going over the N.Y. Times v. Sullivan case. It is a pivotal case and during law school a student will confront the case many times in regard to many different points. It is one of the key decisions supporting the freedom of the press. The actual malice standard requires that the plaintiff in a defamation or libel case prove that the publisher of the statement knew that the statement was false or acted in reckless disregard of its truth. Because of the extremely high burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the difficulty in proving essentially what is inside a person's head, such cases - when they involve public figures - rarely, if ever prevail.
Anyway, it comes out that one of the guys in our class is the grandson of one of the attorneys that worked on the case. Not a big surprise because this is Montgomery and this is where the case originally started. But still, that is kind of cool. Not because he is a relative of someone that handled an important Supreme Court case but because that he had to brief the case and not me.