Commentary The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the independence of the press from any restrictions imposed by Congress, which “shall make no law” abridging press freedom. The principle of unfettered free expression has since been incorporated into the state constitutions, and for centuries has been widely accepted on both the left and the right as a cornerstone of our republican democracy, dating all the way back to the time of Thomas Jefferson. Further, the 1971 decision by the Supreme Court that allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the so-called Pentagon Papers—classified documents about the Vietnam War purloined by Daniel Ellsberg, an anti-war analyst working at MIT’s Center for International Studies, and thus stolen property—codified prescriptions against prior restraint. The court ruled that the government could not prevent publication of anything, no matter how illegally obtained. This was defended as “the public’s right to know.” …