Court Opinion

ID: 9427668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:21:32.92656+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:08.935624
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Blackmun,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall joins, concurring in the result.
I agree that petitioner is not a “public figure” for purposes of this case. The Court reaches this conclusion by reasoning that a prospective public figure must enter a controversy “in an attempt to influence the resolution of the issues involved,” ante, at 168, and that petitioner failed to act in that manner purposefully here. The Court seems to hold, in other words, that a person becomes a limited-issue public figure only if he literally or figuratively “mounts a rostrum” to advocate a particular view.
*170I see no need to adopt so restrictive a definition of “public figure” on the facts before us. Assuming, arguendo, that petitioner gained public-figure status when he became involved in the espionage controversy in 1958, he clearly had lost that distinction by the time respondents published KGB in 1974. Because I believe that the lapse of the intervening 16 years renders consideration of this petitioner’s original public-figure status unnecessary, I concur only in the result.*
In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323 (1974), this Court held that a person may become a public figure for a limited range of issues if he “voluntarily injects himself or is drawn into a particular public controversy.” Id., at 351. Such a person, the Court reasoned, resembles a public official in that he typically enjoys “significantly greater access to the channels of effective communication” and knowingly “runs the risk of closer public scrutiny” than would have been true had he remained in private life. Id., at 344. The passage of time, I believe, often will be relevant in deciding whether a person possesses these two public-figure characteristics. First, a lapse of years between a controversial event and a libelous utterance may diminish the defamed party’s access to the means of counterargument. At the height of the publicity *171surrounding the espionage controversy here, petitioner may well have had sufficient access to the media effectively to rebut a charge that he was a Soviet spy. It would strain credulity to suggest that petitioner could have commanded such media interest when respondents published their book in 1974. Second, the passage of time may diminish the “risk of public scrutiny” that a putative public figure may fairly be said to have assumed. In ignoring the grand jury subpoena in 1958, petitioner may have anticipated that his conduct would invite critical commentary from the press. Following the contempt citation, however, petitioner “succeeded for the most part in returning to . .. private life.” Ante, at 163. Any inference that petitioner “assumed the risk” of public scrutiny in 1958 assuredly is negated by his conscious efforts to regain anonymity during the succeeding 16 years.
This analysis implies, of course, that one may be a public figure for purposes of contemporaneous reporting of a controversial event, yet not be a public figure for purposes of historical commentary on the same occurrence. Historians, consequently, may well run a greater risk of liability for defamation. Yet this result, in my view, does no violence to First Amendment values. While historical analysis is no less vital to the marketplace of ideas than reporting current events, historians work under different conditions than do their media counterparts. A reporter trying to meet a deadline may find it totally impossible to check thoroughly the accuracy of his sources. A historian writing sub specie aeter-nitatis has both the time for reflection and the opportunity to investigate the veracity of the pronouncements he makes.
For these reasons, I conclude that the lapse of 16 years between petitioner’s participation in the espionage controversy and respondents’ defamatory reference to it was sufficient to erase whatever public-figure attributes petitioner once may have possessed. Because petitioner clearly was a private *172individual in 1974, I see no need to decide the more difficult question whether he was a public figure in 1958.

The Court notes, ante, at 166 n. 7, that petitioner at oral argument here disclaimed the contention that the passage of time had restored him to private status, electing to place all his eggs in the more expansive basket that forms the framework of the Court’s opinion. Petitioner proffered this contention in both the District Court and the Court of Appeals, however, and both courts expressly considered it. 429 F. Supp. 167, 178 (1977); 188 U. S. App. D. C. 185, 189, 578 F. 2d 427, 431 (1978). Under these circumstances, petitioner’s tactical decision does not foreclose the “passage of time” rationale as a ratio decidendi. Indeed, petitioner makes the related argument that, if he should be deemed a public figure, the passage of time would be relevant in determining whether respondents’ failure to investigate amounted in this case to “actual malice.” Reply Brief for Petitioner 5-6, n. 8; Tr. of Oral Arg. 10-12.