New York Times Co. v. U.S.
| New York Times Co. v. United States | |
|---|---|
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| Argued June 26, 1971 Decided June 30, 1971 |
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| Full case name | New York Times Company v. United States; United States v. The Washington Post Company et al. |
| Citations | 403 U.S. 713 (more)
91 S. Ct. 2140; 29 L. Ed. 2d 822; 1971 U.S. LEXIS 100
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| Prior history |
United States v. New York Times Co., 328 F. Supp. 324 (S.D.N.Y. 1971) United States v. New York Times Co., 444 F.2d 544 (2d Cir. 1971) United States v. Washington Post Co., 446 F.2d 1322, 1327 (D.C. Cir. 1971) |
| Holding | |
| To exercise prior restraint, the Government must show sufficient evidence that the publication would cause a “grave and irreparable” danger. | |
| Court membership | |
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| Case opinions | |
| Per curiam. | |
| Concurrence | Black, joined by Douglas |
| Concurrence | Douglas, joined by Black |
| Concurrence | Brennan |
| Concurrence | Stewart, joined by White |
| Concurrence | White, joined by Stewart |
| Concurrence | Marshall |
| Dissent | Burger |
| Dissent | Harlan, joined by Burger, Blackmun |
| Dissent | Blackmun |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. I | |
New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on the First Amendment. 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.
By 1971, the United States had been overtly at war with North Vietnam for six years. At this point, 59,000 American soldiers had died and the government was facing widespread dissent from large portions of the American public. In 1967 Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara commissioned a “massive top-secret history of the United States role in Indochina”. Daniel Ellsberg, who had helped to produce the report, leaked 43 volumes of the 47-volume, 7,000-page report to reporter Neil Sheehan of The New York Times in March 1971 and the paper began publishing articles outlining the findings.
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