Word: ollman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Bork's major statement in the free press area came in a 1984 ruling in which he concurred in the dismissal of a libel suit brought by Bertell Ollman, a Marxist college professor, against the conservative columnists Evans and Novak. In language that went beyond Supreme Court decisions on the matter (and which provoked a sharp rebuttal joined by his then colleague Antonin Scalia), Bork wrote that a "remarkable upsurge" in libel suits and damage awards "has threatened to impose a self-censorship on the press" as effective as government censorship. Because the core value of a free press...
...Klein photo is Minigang, Amsterdam Avenue, 1954. A boy with his face screwed into a fury pokes a blurry gun straight at the camera, while a young friend at his arm questions the act with his eyes. In the brief catalog that accompanies the San Diego show, Curator Arthur Ollman reads this image as a metaphor for Klein the photographer: "The aggressor and the intimate voyeur," Ollman calls him. "Both the provocateur and the calm student of provocation...
...appeals judge, Scalia has been almost gratuitously antipress. He dissented from an opinion by his rival for the high court, Judge Bork, that threw out a suit by Bertell Ollman, a New York University professor who had been vilified as a Marxist by Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Bork held that the column was merely opinion and thus protected speech; Scalia argued that it was "a coolly crafted libel." In his 100-page dissent, Scalia wondered why columnists, "even with full knowledge of the falsity or recklessness of what they say, should be able to destroy private reputations...
Evans and Novak had been sued by Bertell Ollman, a Marxist professor at New York University, who claimed that he lost his chance to become head of the University of Maryland's political science department because of a column they wrote criticizing his proposed appointment. He sued for $1 million, plus $5 million in punitive damages, sums that Bork called "quite capable of silencing political commentators forever...
...such thing as a false idea," meaning that opinion is not punishable; opinions should be countered not by judges and juries but by "the competition of other ideas." But facts can be false and actionable. Evans and Novak had quoted one unnamed political scientist as saying that "Ollman has no status within the profession, but is a pure and simple activist." Is that an opinion, or a fact subject to verification? To Judge Antonin Scalia, who is also a Reagan appointee on the court of appeals, this was a "classic and coolly crafted libel." But not to Bork. Ollman...