New York Times Company v. United States 1971
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 40-45 |
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Petitioner: New York Times Company
Respondent: United States of America
Petitioner's Claim: That preventing newspapers from publishing a top secret report on the government's involvement in the Vietnam War violated the First Amendment.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: Alexander M. Bickel
Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Erwin N. Griswold, U.S. solicitor general
Justices for the Court: Hugo Lafayette Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., William O. Douglas, Thurgood Marshall, Potter Stewart, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting: Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, John Marshall Harlan II
Date of Decision: June 30, 1971
Decision: The freedom of the press prevented the federal government from stopping the newspapers.
Significance: The Supreme Court emphasized that "prior restraints" on publication are almost always illegal under the First Amendment.
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Associate Justice Hugo Lafayette Black.
Military conflict leading to the Vietnam War (1954–75) began even before World War II (1939–45). The people of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam were fighting to free themselves from French control. Beginning with President Harry Truman in 1945, America pro-mised to help France maintain control in the region. By 1969, America had over half a million troops fighting in the Vietnam War.
Public opinion about the war was mixed, with many people highly critical of America's involvement. By the mid-1960s, even some government officials began to question whether America should be involved. This led Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to prepare a forty-seven volume report called "History of U.S. Decision-Making Process on Vietnam Policy." Many parts of the report were classified "TOP SECRET." They would come to be called the "Pentagon Papers."
Daniel Ellsberg, an employee of the RAND corporation, helped prepare the report. Initially he was very much in favor of America's involvement in Vietnam. After spending some time in Vietnam and watching innocent civilians die, however, Ellsberg turned against the war. As he prepared the report for McNamara, Ellsberg decided that the public needed to learn
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how and why the federal government had involved America in what Ellsberg thought was an evil and unnecessary war.
In 1969, Ellsberg took eighteen volumes of the report from Washington, D.C., to Santa Barbara, California, where he rented a copy machine and copied them. Ellsberg then tried to convince some government officials to help him release the report to the public. When that failed, Ellsberg gave the...
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