The New York Times' Malice Standard

Sarah Palin has a high bar to meet as of now a public figure. She will need to prove under current standards that the New York Times operated with actual malice when it published that sentence. The First Amendment says nothing about the distinction and defamation law between public figures and not public figures. I think we have two Supreme Court justices interested in rethinking the actual malice standard because it is a textual to the extreme.