What if people thought you said that "slavery wasn't so
bad?" Would it harm your reputation? Would it
matter if the statement was contextualized with various caveats?
According to the Fifth Circuit's August 15, 2017 opinion in Block v. Tanenhaus, context
is everything. The plaintiff, Walter Block, admits that he uttered
the words: "slavery wasn't so bad" while discussing
the concept of "free association," but argues that the
New York Times took these words so badly out of context as to libel
him. The Fifth Circuit ultimately agreed that Block had stated a
viable claim for defamation.
"Rand Paul's Mixed
Inheritance"
On January 25, 2014, New York Times reporters Sam Tanenhaus and Jim Rutenberg published an article entitled
"Rand Paul's Mixed Inheritance," which
discussed the ideological roots of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. In
preparing the article, the reporters drew on an interview with
Block, a libertarian economics professor who, according to the
defendants,
