Leaks, National Security, and the First Amendment

Geoffrey R. Stone, Lee C. Bollinger

"This chapter principally reviews the development of the law in the United States since the Pentagon Papers decision. It then more briefly addresses three related subjects: the difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of the Pentagon Papers regime in permitting disclosures that benefit public debate more than they harm national security while discouraging leaks that cause more harm than good; how the US legal framework for handling national security information compares to the United Kingdom's; and how technological and institutional changes over the five decades since the Pentagon Papers decision have called into question some of that decision's premises. I.Developments in US Law Since the Pentagon Papers case, the government only rarely has sought to enjoin publication of material-and only once succeeded in winning an injunction on the ground that publication threatened national...