Lawyers representing famed Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reevaluate a ruling that has stood for nearly 62 years in a case involving CNN.The Supreme Court is anticipated to decide whether to take up the case in the near future, as indicated by court records. On February 4, the court announced that the case would be reviewed during a conference scheduled for February 20, as noted by Newsweek.
The Supreme Court has formally asked CNN to respond to Dershowitz’s petition for a writ of certiorari, a request made on Tuesday. A lawyer for the media organization chose not to exercise the right to respond last month.
The petition requests that the court evaluate the possibility of altering or eliminating the standards outlined in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. The 1964 ruling established that a state is prohibited from awarding damages to a public official for defamatory falsehoods concerning their official conduct unless it can be demonstrated that there was “actual malice.”
This implies that the speaker made the statement with knowledge of its falsity or without considering its veracity.
Dershowitz’s petition urges the court to evaluate the potential elimination of the actual malice standard outlined in Sullivan, “or at the very least, in relation to private citizens who assume public figure status.”
Attorneys representing Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, have claimed that CNN defamed him by airing misrepresentations of a statement he delivered on the Senate floor while serving as counsel for President Donald Trump during the impeachment proceedings.
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The petition claimed that the media outlet failed to include “crucial qualifying language” from Dershowitz’s statement made on January 29, 2020.
In reply to an inquiry from Senator Cruz regarding a potential quid pro quo, Dershowitz discussed the constitutional criteria for impeachment, as outlined in the petition. The petition outlined three distinct categories of presidential conduct: actions driven by the public interest, actions influenced by electoral considerations, and actions stemming from personal financial gain.
Dershowitz stated that actions classified under the third category would be deemed “purely corrupt,” as outlined in the petition.
“If a hypothetical President of the United States said to a hypothetical leader of a foreign country: Unless you build a hotel with my name on it and unless you give me a million-dollar kickback, I will withhold the funds. That is an easy case. That is purely corrupt and in the purely private interest,” Dershowitz said in his 2020 statement.
Attorneys for Dershowitz said CNN’s characterizations of Dershowitz’s comments did not mention his exclusion of “personal pecuniary interest” from his analysis.
“Though CNN indisputably possessed the complete video and transcript of his statement, … its commentators systematically disregarded the qualifying language that gave Dershowitz’s statement its true meaning, attributing to him a position he had expressly rejected: that presidents could engage in any conduct whatsoever, including bribery and extortion, without committing an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz’s attorneys wrote.
Dershowitz filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claiming that Florida law had defamed him.
On CNN’s motion for summary judgment, the district court ruled in favor of CNN.
Attorneys for Dershowitz said lower courts have held that Sullivan’s actual malice standard bars Dershowitz from seeking any remedy.
Jay Alan Sekulow, Jordan A. Sekulow, Stuart J. Roth, Walter M. Weber, Christina A. Compagnone, Benjamin P. Sisney, Geoffrey R. Surtees and Nathan J. Moelker, attorneys for Alan Dershowitz, in a petition for a writ of certiorari: “Indeed, after more than half a century of experience with Sullivan, the time has come for this Court to overrule or limit Sullivan in light of experience and the vastly changed meaning of ‘press’ in the internet age.”
