Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Garrett Epps (Eugene, OR) is the Orlando John & Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law. He is the author of Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America; To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial; two novels; and many scholarly articles.

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The First Amendment FREEDOM OF THE PRESS

Prometheus Books

Contents

Series Editor's Preface David B. Oppenheimer..........................................................11Acknowledgments........................................................................................15Introduction Garrett Epps.............................................................................17Areopagitica John Milton..............................................................................29"An Apology for the Printers" Benjamin Franklin.......................................................40"An American 'Cato' Defends Criticism of the Government" "Cato".......................................46"Sentiments on the Liberty of the Press" Andrew Bradford..............................................52Andrew Hamilton Defends John Peter Zenger Andrew Hamilton.............................................57"Libels; Liberty of the Press" William Blackstone.....................................................65"The Federalist No. 84" Alexander Hamilton............................................................68Reply to the Pennsylvania Minority Noah Webster.......................................................71"Letter to Edward Carrington" Thomas Jefferson........................................................74"The Virginia Report of 1799" James Madison...........................................................76From Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville.......................................................87Contempt of Court: Patterson v. Colorado...............................................................99Publishing Dissenting Views in Wartime: Frohwerk v. United States......................................103"Prior Restraint": Near v. Minnesota...................................................................107The Press and the "Taxes on Knowledge": Grosjean v. American Press Company.............................115The End of Seditious Libel: New York Times v. Sullivan.................................................121Broadcast Licensees and "Fairness": Red Lion Broadcasting Company v. FCC...............................133Censorship and "National Security": New York Times v. United States....................................141Is There a "Journalist's Privilege"?: Branzburg v. Hayes...............................................151Narrowing Obscenity: Miller v. California..............................................................164Newspapers and "the Right of Reply": Miami Herald v. Tornillo..........................................170Free Press and Fair Trial: Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart........................................176Reporting on Judicial Discipline: Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Virginia............................188Prior Restraint and the End of the World: United States v. Progressive, Inc............................195"Pornography" and Women's Rights: American Booksellers Association, Inc. v. Hudnut.....................203Offensive Parody: Hustler Magazine v. Falwell..........................................................210Access to Criminal Trials: Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia.......................................216Promises of Confidentiality as "Contracts": Cohen v. Cowles Media......................................226Free Speech on the Internet: Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union....................................233"The Bill of Rights" Hugo L. Black....................................................................245From Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment Thomas Emerson....................................256"Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems" Robert H. Bork.................................272"Or of the Press" Potter Stewart......................................................................281"The Media That Citizens Need" C. Edwin Baker.........................................................286From the preface to Emergence of a Free Press Leonard W. Levy.........................................300"Rethinking Prior Restraint" John Calvin Jeffries Jr..................................................307"Or of the [Blog]" Paul Horwitz.......................................................................322Constitution of the United States of America...........................................................341Amendments to the Constitution.........................................................................357

Introduction

Garrett Epps

The American law of press freedom is an international and historical anomaly. Even today, during a protracted and frightening state of war, the press in this country remains freer than any press in the world, or virtually any in history. Almost alone among legal systems in democratic nations, American courts give strong legal protection to "hate speech" such as Holocaust denial (banned in most countries and arguably illegal under international human rights norms), to scurrilous denunciations of public officials, and to uncensored publication of news that the government claims to find an immediate and serious threat to national security.

After a complex historical evolution over the past two hundred years, America has taken the English common-law concept of "the freedom of the press," which meant almost solely freedom from prior restraint, and transformed it into a set of institutional protections that gives critics of society and government extraordinary freedom to disseminate views that are unpopular, subversive and even just plain hateful. Though support for the institutional media waxes and wanes, most Americans seem reasonably content to allow them to function freely.

How did we get here? What are the historical roots of "the freedom of the press"? What were the key legal events in its transformation from "publish at your peril" to "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open"? What role did journalists themselves play in this process, and how important was the contribution of courts and lawyers? Does American press freedom serve as an example to the world?

These questions interest me at two levels, both of which I have tried to address in the anthology that follows. In my current life, I am a legal scholar who frequently writes on First Amendment and press-freedom topics for a professional audience. But before that, I was for more than fifteen years a working journalist. As a reporter, a feature writer, an opinion columnist, and an editor, I have grappled firsthand with many of the problems addressed by the cases and essays in this book: When should a newspaper publish material it believes to be true but cannot conclusively prove? What parts of a public figure's private life are relevant and suitable for publication, and what should remain private? How far is too far in an opinion writer's game of attack and caricature? When must a promise of confidentiality be honored, even at the cost of legal jeopardy, and when must it be broken, on the grounds that the source to whom it was made has misused the reporter-source relationship to spread false and scurrilous rumors? What should a reporter do when government secrets-such as the identity of an American intelligence agent-fall accidentally into his or her hands?

As a result of this dual consciousness, I have tried to create a volume that will be useful to editors, reporters, and ordinary citizens with an interest in these topics, while still retaining interest for specialists in...