Supreme Court Upholds New York Times and Washington Post on Pentagon Papers, 6-3, reported today 1971:

New York Times Co. v. United States

Argued: June 26, 1971
Decided: June 30, 1971
Full case name New York Times Company v. United States; United States v. The Washington Post Company et al.
Holding:
To exercise prior restraint, the Government must show sufficient evidence that the publication would have caused a "grave and irreparable" danger.

New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on the First Amendment right to freedom of the press. The ruling made it possible for The New York Times and The Washington Post newspapers to publish the then-classified Pentagon Papers without risk of government censorship or punishment.

President Richard Nixon had claimed executive authority to force the Times to suspend publication of classified information in its possession. The question before the court was whether the constitutional freedom of the press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was subordinate to a claimed need of the executive branch of government to maintain the secrecy of information. The Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment did protect the right of The New York Times to print the materials.

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