Courts, Judges and Politics led by Mark Wolf

Description

8.   April 24, 2014 – From the Pentagon Papers to Edward Snowden

The guest speaker will be James Greenfield, the New York Times editor of the Pentagon Papers.  This session will explore the role of the courts in balancing the interests of free speech and national security historically and in the internet age.  In 1971, the unauthorized disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the VietNam war, exposed systematic lies by the administration of President Lyndon Johnson to Congress and the American people, and led to a Supreme Court ruling that makes it very difficult for the government to obtain court orders prohibiting publication of classified information.  As a result, the government has increasingly relied on the threat of criminal prosecution to deter such disclosures.  The advent of the internet has raised the risks for the government and the media.  The courts are now again challenged to decide competing, compelling claims of fundamental importance to the future of American democracy.  

Trevor Timm, co-founder and the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, will also join the study group. He is a writer, activist, and lawyer who specializes in free speech and government transparency issues. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Al Jazeera,Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Harvard Law and Policy Review, Politico, PBS MediaShift and Salon.

Room: FDR

***All study groups are off-the-record and not for media coverage***