2 posts tagged “pentagon papers”

June 30

In 1971, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court gave the New York Times and the Washington Post permission to resume publication of the Pentagon Papers.  Justice Potter Stewart acknowledged that some of the documents in the study would harm the national interest.  "But I cannot say that disclosure of any of them will surely result in direct, immediate and irreparable damages to our Nation or its people," he said. 

June 26

In 2006, four Connecticut librarians spoke to the press for the first time about their fight against a National Security Letter (NSL) that the FBI had issued in an effort to obtain the records of their patrons. With the assistance of the ACLU, they had challenged the NSL as a threat to the privacy of their patrons. However, a gag order had prevented them from discussing the case publically for nearly a year. They were finally allowed to speak when the government withdrew the NSL and lifted the gag.

In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling declaring the Communications Decency Act (CDA) unconstitutional in Reno v. U.S. The CDA banned the display of "harmful" sexual material on the Internet. The Court declared that the law would deprive adults of information that was protected by the First Amendment.  The Electronic Freedom Foundation has posted a brief commemorative piece.

In 1971, in an extraordinary Saturday session, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the Pentagon Papers case. President Richard Nixon had obtained injunctions blocking the publication of excerpts from the secret government study, a history of American involvement in Vietnam. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post challenged the injunctions as unconstitutional prior restraints on the press.