Exceptions To Restrictions On Prior Restraint
Not all restrictions on free speech are a breach of the prior restraint doctrine. It is widely accepted that publication of information affecting national security, particularly in wartime, may be restricted, even when there are laws that protect freedom of expression. In many cases invocation of national security is controversial, with opponents of suppression arguing that government errors and embarrassment are being covered up; examples are given below.
Publication of information on legal cases in progress may be restricted by an injunction. (Otherwise publishing of material which may affect a case is subject to penalties, but not prevented from the outset.)
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Famous quotes containing the words exceptions, prior and/or restraint:
“Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect. A man does not see, that, as he eats, so he thinks: as he deals, so he is, and so he appears; he does not see that his son is the son of his thoughts and of his actions; that fortunes are not exceptions but fruits; that relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but everywhere and always; no miscellany, no exemption, no anomaly,—but method, and an even web; and what comes out, that was put in.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“A diff’rent cause, says Parson Sly,
The same effect may give:
Poor Lubin fears, that he shall die;
His wife, that he may live.”
—Matthew Prior (1664–1721)
“A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)