NEW YORK TIMES CO. v. UNITED STATES 403 U.S. 713 (1971)

New York Times Co. v. United States, more commonly known as the Pentagon Papers case, is one of the landmarks of contemporary prior restraint doctrine. Only near v. minnesota (1931) rivals it as a case of central importance in establishing the first amendment's particular and extreme aversion to any form of official restriction applied prior to the act of speaking or the act of publication.

The dramatic facts of the case served to keep it before the public eye even as it was being litigated and decided. On June 12, 1971, the New York Times commenced publication of selected portions of a 1968 forty-seven-volume classified Defense Department study entitled "History of United States Decision Making Process on Vietnam Policy" and a 1965 classified Defense Department study entitled "The Command and Control Study of the Tonkin Gulf Incident Done by the Defense Department's Weapons Systems Evaluation Group in 1965." Collectively these documents came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. Within a few days other major newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Detroit Free Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Miami Herald also commenced publication of the Pentagon Papers. The papers had been provided to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a former Defense Department official and …