Prior Restraint Quotes

Terms such as 'microaggression,' describing an inadvertent act of offense, have entered the college lexicon, empowering an atmosphere of prior restraint on speech. And many colleges are also disinviting speakers in fear of offending certain elements of their student communities.

The government would be able to go to court with respect to newspaper articles, broadcast pieces and the like that they thought were bad or harmful or even against the government and try to block them.

In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam War, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

Prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment Rights.

In the Pentagon Papers case, the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published.

The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech.

First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.

The special harm attaching to prior restraint is that the government can keep materials from reaching the public, so there can be no accountability, no judgment by the people that the power to suppress was wrongly exercised.

Americans should sense danger when a government tries to stop a newspaper from disclosing the origins of an unpopular war ... or accuses a newspaper of endangering national security by disclosing secret and illegal wiretapping.

A President of the United States cannot restrain anything from publication.

As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.

Newspapers are a surprisingly good business in a country (Saudi Arabia) where the truth is so carefully guarded. Members of the royal family, Al Saud, are obsessively concerned about their image; they own or control most of the Saudi press, which dominates the Arab world. Within the kingdom, there are more than a dozen papers on the newsstands every morning. The most authoritative of them, and the most progressive, … are owned by Saudi princes but published in London. They are constrained by the same taboos that cripple all Saudi publications, however: nothing provocative can be said about Islam, the kingdom’s official religion; the government, which is effectively led by Crown Prince Abdullah; or the royal family, which is headed by King Fahd.

Can any sane person say that before something comes on the Net you must screen it? How can there be pre-screening?

The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public: to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press: but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity.

against the form or meaning of any restraint or ordinance, contained or to be contained, in any statute of this realm.