First Amendment and National Security

The issue before the Court is whether the First Amendment permits an injunction to be granted so as to forbid publication of information by the Melville Morning Milk, pursuant to a provision of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which provides that a restraint is permissible when the Act has been violated to the endangerment of national security. In order to decide this issue, the Court must also determine whether the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 is overbroad and/or vague and therefore unconstitutional, and, if the Act is not overbroad and/or vague, whether national security will, in fact, be damaged by publication of this information. This Court believes that the extraordinary circumstances in the case at bar warrant the extreme measure of prior restraint and therefore justify the imposition of an injunction of publication.

The basic facts of the case are uncomplicated. A member of the United Nations' inspection team, John Nozei, discovered a small nuclear device designed to deliver a massive dose of lethal biological chemicals in Iraq, a country known to be both aggressive and hostile to U.S. interests. After a month had lapsed with no mention of the discovery in the media, Mr. Nozei called a newspaperman and friend, Horace Necksis, at the Melville Morning Milk and informed him of his discovery. He later proceeded to deliver both pictures and plans of the nuclear device in direct contravention of an oath of secrecy not to disclose "any information or intelligence gleaned b

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rally speaking, a content-neutral regulation will be sustained under the First Amendment if it advances important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech and does not burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further those interests. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. F.C.C., 117 S.Ct. 1174, 137 L.Ed.2d 369 (1997). Justice Blackman, in his dissenting opinion in New York Times Co. v. U.S., perhaps stated it most succinctly when he said: The First Amendment, after all, is only one part of an entire Constitution. Article II of the great document vests in the Executive Branch primary power over the conduct of foreign affairs and places in that branch the responsibility for the Nation's safety. Each provision of the Constitution is important, and I cannot subscribe to a doctrine of unlimited absolutism for the First Amendment at the cost of downgrading other provisions. First Amendment absolutism has never commanded a majority of this Court. New York Times v. U.S., 403 U.S. 713, 29 L.Ed.2d 822, 851, 91 S.Ct. 2140 (1971) (Blackman, J., dissenting). This Court recognizes that an injunction has only been granted in a national security matter once before, when a brief tem

Category: Government - F