Court Opinion

ID: 9473344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:27:01.957509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:28.149412
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
■I concur in Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion, and particularly in the holding, ante at 649, that “the article in question cannot be read to imply that Newsweek espoused the validity of the rape allegation----” In my view, however, the implication that the plaintiff prosecuted Banks to get revenge for the rape charge is not actionable. It is a statement of opinion about the motives of a public official and should be absolutely privileged under the First Amendment. I therefore dissent from Part III of the Court’s opinion and would affirm the judgment of the District Court.1
Until today, I had thought that one of the undisputed rights of every American, including the much-discussed “media,” was to question the motives of public servants. Such personal criticism may be abusive, and perhaps we would have a better country if there were a lot less of it, but it is, in my opinion, no part of the business of government, including the Judicial Branch, to tell the people that they cannot criticize the motives of their own employees. (Governor Janklow, of course, is not an employee of Newsweek, but the rule announced by this Court would apparently apply equally to a citizen of South Dakota who made the same statement in a coffee shop or during a political campaign.)
It is hard to draw a bright line between. “fact” and “opinion.” There is a sense in which one’s intention or motive in performing a certain act is properly categorized as “fact.” Whether someone accused of mail fraud, say, had criminal intent is a question of “fact” to be decided by the jury in a criminal prosecution. Whether someone promising to perform a contract actually had no intention of doing so is a “fact” that, in some jurisdictions, will support a civil action for fraud. And in this sense, whether Governor Janklow prosecuted the case against Banks for revenge, or out of a genuine sense of duty, is a question of “fact.” But the term “fact” need not have the same meaning in every legal context. The meaning we give to it should depend on the purposes of the law being applied. Here, that law is the First Amendment, which in the most uncompromising terms (“Congress shall make no law ... ”) seeks to protect freedom of speech. And certainly speech about government and its officers, about how well or badly they carry out their duties, lies at the very heart of that Amendment.
The District of Columbia Circuit has recently laid out a useful framework for distinguishing “fact” from “opinion” in the context of the First Amendment privilege *657against suits for defamation. Ollman v. Evans, 750 F.2d 970 (D.C.Cir.1984) (en banc). It suggests a number of relevant factors: how precise or indefinite the defendant’s statement is; whether the statement is readily verifiable; the literary context in which the statement occurs; and the broader social context into which it fits. On balance, I believe these factors point decisively in the direction of “opinion” in this case.
The statement (that plaintiff “was prosecuting Banks” eight months after the tribal court’s unfavorable finding) is not precise. It does not say in so many words that Janklow’s motive was revenge. It does not say in so many words that the prosecution was commenced after the tribal court’s decision. It says only that the prosecution was going on eight months after the tribal court’s decision, and no one can deny that that is true. The imputation of improper motive must be drawn from this sentence in the article by implication. The sentence is not nearly so precise as a direct accusation of improper motive. In addition, unlike the Court, I believe this sort of accusation is “broad, unfocused, [and] subjective.” Ante at 652. It will be much more difficult to prove or disprove at trial than whether or hot someone is guilty of rape, which was the imputation held actionable in Cianci v. New Times Publishing Co., 639 F.2d 54 (2d Cir.1980), cited by the Court. I shrink from the prospect of a trial at which the jury will be asked to return a verdict on the motives with which a public official did his job.
As for the literary context of the statement, it was, as the Court says, not on the Op-Ed page of a newspaper (as was the column at issue in Oilman), but it was in a weekly newsmagazine, as opposed to the news columns of a daily newspaper, and I believe most readers would expect a freer expression of personal opinion by writers in that kind of forum. (Indeed, the article as a whole is tendentious and slanted. It is transparently pro-Banks.) And finally, there is the broader social context, the criticism of the motives and intentions of a public official, a public servant elected to prosecute crime. As I have tried to make clear already, this is a consideration of paramount importance.2 It is vital to our form of government that press and citizens alike be free to discuss and, if they think fit, impugn the motives of public officials. This is not a case in which the imputed improper motive itself implies a specific crime or act of impropriety, for example, that someone took a bribe. It involves, instead, the kind of general complaint, often expressed in an ill-tempered or ill-considered fashion, that one can hear every day wherever government, state or federal, is discussed.
I am not blind to the fact that this kind of public discussion has its costs. Good people may shrink from public office because of them. Federal judges are no strangers to this sort of attack, and we may often wish to be free of it. But the only restraint that should be imposed on this sort of discussion is self-restraint, either of the individual citizen or of the press itself. The Framers of our Constitution long ago struck the balance in favor of speech, and judges ought not to re-weigh it, however much we might desire to elevate the level of public discourse. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, writing from Paris in dismay over press attacks on John Jay, said:
In truth it is afflicting that a man who has past his life in serving the public ... should yet be liable to have his peace of mind so much disturbed by any individual who shall think proper to arraign him in a newspaper. It is however an evil for which there is no remedy. Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
9 Papers of Thomas Jefferson 239 (Boyd ed. 1954).
*658If it was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, it’s good enough for me, and I therefore respectfully dissent.

. It is accordingly unnecessary for me to reach the issues discussed in Part IV of the Court’s opinion, and I express no view on them.

. In this respect, my views may be closer to those stated in Judge Bork’s concurrence in Oilman, 750 F.2d at 993, 1004, than to the more formal factor analysis adopted by Judge Starr's opinion for the Court.