by HLPR Online editorial staff
Writing for the online edition of the Harvard Law and Policy Review, Jonathan Peters argues that the Justice Department should proceed carefully in any prosecution of Wikileaks or Julian Assange due to serious constitutional concerns:
[T]he standard the Court used for prior restraint in the Pentagon Papers case could be roughly the same standard the Court would use in a criminal prosecution of WikiLeaks or Assange for publishing classified information. In other words, the WikiLeaks disclosures would be protected unless the government could show that they would “surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people.”
Peters is a lawyer and the Frank Martin fellow at the Missouri School of Journalism. Read the full article here.