office just prior to the filing of this action for an injunction against the Melville Morning Milk.
The Atomic Energy Act provides that there will be no prosecution of those communicating "restricted data," unless the possessor of that information has reason to believe it will be used to harm the United States or "will work to the advantage of a foreign nation." Where First Amendment freedoms are at stake, precision of drafting and clarity of purpose of regulating legislation are essential. With respect to freedom of speech and press, the First Amendment functions as a check on legislative power. Intrusion on these freedoms must be kept extremely limited and only lifted to prevent transgressing against more important interests. In criminal law, the Constitutional requirement of definiteness is violated by a statute that fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden. However, in cases involving the freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment, the objectionable qualities of vagueness and overbreadth depend upon the danger of tolerating the existence of a penal statute susceptible of sweeping and improper applications in the area of First Amendment freedoms. The fact alone that an act is open to the criticism that it is vague, uncertain and indefinite in some of its provisions does not render it wholly void, so long as it does not infringe some Constitutional provision and is capable of execution in its more essential provisions. Collier v. United States, (CA4 Va) 283 F.2d 780, cert. denied 365 U.S. 833, 5 L.Ed.2d 744, 81 S.Ct. 746.
The newspaper contends that the Act itself is overbroad and vague, and thus unconstitutional, since 1) only the government knows what is declassified and what is unlawful to communicate, 2) the government is under no obligation to inform the public when information has become declassified, and 3) even the declassification procedu...