Tuesday, June 24, 1986
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
dutona
Bob Asnuissen, Editor, 472, 17(16
James Honors, Editorial Pane Editor
Kent Kndacdtt, Sens Editor
.left' Korhelik, Associatr S'nrs Editor
.lefl' Apel, Sjorts Editor
Nebrayskan
University ol Nebraska-Lincoln
Charles Lminuu v, Arts & En tcrta i h went Ed i tor
Kudos to
Action needed to
Three cheers for NU Presi
dent Ronald Roskens. At
Saturday's regents meeting
Roskens presented four princi
ples which he argued should
guide the future of the univer
sity: ( 1 ) NU is one university; (2)
NU must regain its stature in
research; (3) NU must foster a
sense of community and dedica
tion to service; (4) NU must fos
ter change, and work with other
schools.
These principles should be
engraved in stone. It is all too
obvious that NU has lacked clar
ity of vision on all levels: From
the level of the teachers through
the administrators, Regents and
the Unicameral. Roskens accu
rately noted the university ma
laise, "We seem increasingly un
easy, confused and divided."
Rosken's comment portends a
change in all this. He's set a tone
for the school that, if followed,
can't help but bode well for a
more positive future. But action
must follow these potent words
for any lasting good to be done.
Roskens had several concrete
suggestions to begin a follow
through. First, providing budget data
to the legislature on financial
Judicial nominees
Conservative court reinforced
Perhaps the single most last
ing decision a President makes
is in selecting Supreme Court
justices. Taking that one step
further is the power to appoint
the Chief Justice to the Supreme
Court.
With the retirement of Warren
Burger after 17 years as Chief
Justice, President Reagan was
given that most delightful job.
lie chose William Rehnquist.
Along with the nomination of
Rehnquist as Chief Justice, the
President also filled the spot
vacated by Rehnquist with An
tonin Scalia.
Supreme Court justices are
given one of two labels, conser
vative or liberal. The recent nom
inations by President Reagan
leaves the count at roughly four
conservatives, two liberals and
three who swing from side to
side. Of the nine justices only
two, Thurgood Marshall and Byron
White, were nominated by Demo
cratic presidents.
The concern with any new
appointment to the high court is
that politics will influence the
justices' decisions. President
Reagan has now nominated two
members to the Supreme Court.
But, once nominated, the justi
Editorial Policy
Unsigned editorials represent
official policy of the summer 1986
Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the
Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its
members are Bob Asmussen, editor;
James Rogers, editorial page editor;
Kent Endacott, news editor; Jeff
Koskens
effect proposals
priorities. This will require "stra
tegic planning," which presup
poses that decisions be made
and that priorities be explicitly
set. Very good.
Second, of course, salaries
need to increase.
Third a very, very good sug
gestion entrance require
ments even stiffer than those
going into effect this fall should
be implemented. Roskens should
be lauded for pointing out the
little heard proposition that stu
dent quality is very important to
setting the academic tone of a
university. Roskens was abso
lutely correct in arguing that
"we should concentrate more on
student quality rather than quan
tity." Perhaps we should not blither
so much about propositions that
have "all been heard before. But
Roskens seems to have placed
them together in a cogent frame
work. And that's what has been
so lacking up to this point. Pres
ident Roskens deserves a lot of
encouragement for proclaiming
his bold vision to return NU to a
high quality institution. Thank
you, President Roskens, and good
luck.
ces should hold no allegiances
toward the views of their nomi
nator. The U.S. government is set up
so that the three branches of
government can check each other.
Yet, there is always the concern
that a president will be able to
apply pressure on a nominee
and, therefore, have more con
trol than the Constitution dic
tates. The new nominations will likely
turn the court toward an even
more conservative vein than it
has taken under Burger.
The Supreme Court now in
cludes four members 75 years or
older. With more than two years
left in the Reagan administra
tion, it's possible the President
could nominate a majority of the
justices. This proposition is one
the country might not want to
face. With the youth of the new
nominees, Reagan would have a
distinct influence on the court
and the country, long after his
term ends.
One justice, Marshall, won't
go easily, though. When asked
one time about retirement, Mar
shall said, "I was appointed for
life and I intend to serve out the
term."
Korbelik, associate news editor, Jeff
Apel, sports editor; Charles Lieur
ance, arts and entertainment editor.
Editorials do not necessarily re
flect the views of the university, its
employees, the students or the NU
Board of Regents.
mir E! .
' )jf p I f lw
v'l''' ? " " '
Libel law merits overturning
Columnist says Safire 's 'knee-jerk 'reaction unnecessary
Recent anti-Scalia fulminations
have brought the state of libel
law to the front of the public
mind. Antonin Scalia, for those of you
who do not slavishly attend to the
news, is President Reagan's nominee to
take Justice Rehnquist's spot on the
Supreme Court. (Reagan nominated
Rehnquist to take over the Chief Jus
tice seat from Warren Burger, who is
retiring.)
As a result of several rather modest
suggestions on libel law, William Safire
recently fumed that Scalia is "in the
vanguard of the bench's trendy media
bashers" and is "the worst enemy of
free speech in America today." To turn
a Kilpatrickian phrase: balderdash.
Saf'ire's greatest fear seems to be
that Scalia might favor reversing the
1964 New York Times v. Sullivan case.
In this famous libel decision, the
Supreme Court carved out an excep
tion to traditional libel damage recov
eries possible to public officials unless
"the statement was made with 'actual
malice' that is, with knowledge that
it was false or with reckless disregard
of whether it was false or not."
Yet even if Safire's worst fear were
true, and the Sullivan decision were
overturned, the only result would be
the advancement of responsible jour
nalism. It hardly entails the destruc
tion of the first amendment as Safire
predicts. Given the emotion of the
issue, it would serve well to explain my
claim.
What must be kept in mind is that
false, injurious statements are not
recoverable unless the Court's Sullivan
criteria are met. That is, a person may
suffer severe loss due to defamat ion by
the press and have no means of recov
Nomination of Rehnquist, Scalia
insure Reagan's influence into future
Zeke Bonura was a large and remar
kably immobile first baseman
whose slowness did not grieve
him because he understood a vital
principle of baseball: You are rarely
charged with an error when you do not
touch the ball.
Conservatives have hoped the Su
preme Court would adhere to the Bon
ura Insight, sometimes known as judi
cial restraint. The Burger Court has
not. Indeed, its judicial activism has
been as marked as, and arguably more
destructive than, the Warren Court's.
None of the Warren Court's most
important rulings has been overturned
or even significantly circumscribed in
the 17 Burger years. The sweep of the
Miranda ruling on the rights of sus
pects has been only slightly circums
cribed. The Burger Court is responsible
for the ruinous spread of forced busing
as a "remedy" for segregation. The
Burger Court misconstrued the 1964
ery because a newspaper printed the
words rather than a regular, unpro
tected person.
In reaching this result the Court
employed the well-known "chilling"
argument: "Whether or not a news
paper can survive a succession of such
judgments, the pall of fear and timidity
ity imposed upon those who would give
voice to public criticism is an atmos
phere in which the First Amendment
Freedoms cannot survive."
James
Rogers
What this reasoning amounts to is
t he subsidization of newspapers at the
expense of those they admittedly injure.
The bottom line is that fair libel laws
are bad for the profit of corporations
that run the press, and therefore news
papers don't have to compensate indi
viduals for certain injuries. In a phrase,
a class of plaintiffs were turned into a
human resource for the profit of a busi
ness. The Sullivan rule violates basic
intuit ions ofjustice and fairness. Kant's
categorical imperative sums up the
notion in this fashion: "Act in such a
way that you always treat humanity
. . .never simply as a means, but always
at the same time as an end." There is
hardly any clearer instance in the law
of treating people as chattel than
exists in post-Sullivan libel law.
Certainly some "news" won't be
printed if Sullivan is overturned. But
Civil Rights Act to permit reversed
racial discrimination on behalf of government-approved
minorities.
George
Will
Burger Court activism extended pro
cedural due process guarantees to
public-school students accused of be
having badly. The Burger Court has
done nothing significant to reassert
.reason in the interpretation of the ban
on "establishment of religion" no
thing, that is, to re-establish the prin
ciple that government must be neutral
between sects, not between religion
and secularism.
And nothing the Warren Court did
Oil
this result would occur only when the
newspaper is not reasonably sure of the
accuracy of the story. Decisions based
on this criteria hardly portend the
demise of the First Amendment. After
all, the free press in the American
republic survived for well over a cen
tury and a half without the rules which
the Sullivan Court touted as essential
for First Amendment freedoms.
The above argument should not be
taken to say that no distinction between
the press and other potential libel
defendants can reasonably be made.
For example, newspapers are certainly
more affected by abuse of process in
libel cases than are regular people.
That is, newspapers are more suscep
tible to intimidation merely from the
transaction costs of litigation: litiga
tion aimed simply at intimidating pap
ers still costs the press lots of money.
But there are better remedies available
to forestall this lamentable result than
the overbroad Sullivan exception. For
example, making losers pay attorney
fees would avoid most of the cost to
newspapers of defending against frivo
lous suits filed merely to "punish"
newspapers for running an accurate,
but politically embarassing story.
Neither Safire nor I know if Scalia
believes that the Sullivan case should
be overturned. But quite contrary to
Safire's knee-jerk reaction, the reason
able man can only hope that Scalia will
manifest a much more balanced ap
proach to the business of the press and
its responsibility than is represented
by the extreme license accorded to the
press by current law.
Rogers, typically an economics graduate
and law student, is picking up some
math hours this summer.
was as raw and radical an exercise of
judicial power as the 1973 decision
that swept away the laws regulating
abortions in 50 states.
Supreme Court appointments are
the premier spoils of presidential polit
ics. Each appointee is 20 percent of a
majority at the apex of one of the three
branches of government, the branch
that has assumed custody of the issues
(race, abortion, etc.) the political bran
ches have been pleased to relinquish.
The Court is where American public
philosophy is published as an unend
ing serial. The departure of Burger, the
elevation of William Rehnquist and the
nomination of Antonin Scalia are impor
tant episodes in the process of leng
thening the shadow today's President
will cast into tomorrow.
The Court is a small, face-to-face
society where politics has subtle dy-
SeeWILLon5
