Professor

Samantha

Barbas

Samantha Barbas is a scholar of legal and media history—with a focus on journalism, privacy, defamation, and the First Amendment—and the author of seven books. Barbas received the Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2020.

Her most recent book, Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan, made The New Yorker’s list of the Best Books of 2023. Actual Malice was a finalist for the Order of the Coif Book Award and was honored by the legal publication Green Bag for “exemplary legal writing.”

Her other books include The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst: Free Speech Renegade (University of Chicago Press, 2021); Newsworthy: The Supreme Court Battle Over Privacy and Press Freedom (Stanford University Press, 2017); and Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America (Stanford University Press, 2015). Her books have been reviewed and featured in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and on CNN. 

Barbas is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and gave the 2023 Constitution Day Lecture for the Library of Congress. She has spoken on free speech issues at the Aspen Ideas Festival and the New York Historical Society. Her commentary on libel and First Amendment topics has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, and USA Today, among other publications.