Reply #2: As Kerry is a public figure... [View All]

[Davis_X_Machina]

...the hurdles such a suit would have to climb to survive its first contact with a judge are so high as to make the exercise pointless.

In practice, the concurrence by Black and Douglas, not Brennan's opinion, has won the day:

"Malice," even as defined by the Court, is an elusive, abstract concept, hard to prove and hard to disprove. The requirement that malice be proved provides at best an evanescent protection for the right critically to discuss public affairs and certainly does not measure up to the sturdy safeguard embodied in the First Amendment. Unlike the Court, therefore, I vote to reverse exclusively on the ground that the Times and the individual defendants had an absolute, unconditional constitutional right to publish in the Times advertisement their criticisms of the Montgomery agencies and officials.

Times v. Sullivan on balance has helped way more than it's harmed.