Written by a group of the nation's leading constitutional scholars, a deeply informed, thoughtful, and often surprising examination of who has First Amendment rights to disclose, to obtain, or to publish classified information relating to the national security of the United States.
One of the most vexing and perennial questions facing any democracy is how to balance the government's legitimate need to conduct its operations-especially those related to protecting the national security-in secret, with the public's right and responsibility to know what its government is doing. There is no easy answer to this issue, and different nations embrace different solutions. In the United States, at the constitutional level, the answer begins exactly half a century ago with the Supreme Court's landmark 1971 decision in the Pentagon Papers case. The final decision, though, left many important questions unresolved. Moreover, the issue of leaks and secrecy has cropped up repeatedly since, most recently in the Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning cases. In
National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press , two of America's leading First Amendment scholars, Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, have gathered a group of the nation's leading constitutional scholars-including John Brennan, Eric Holder, Cass R. Sunstein, and Michael Morell, among many others-to delve into important dimensions of the current system, to explain how we should think about them, and to offer as many solutions as possible.
Geoffrey R. Stone, Professor of Law, University of Chicago, Lee C. Bollinger, President, Columbia University
Lee C. Bollinger became Columbia University's 19th president in 2002 and is the longest serving Ivy League president. He is Columbia's first Seth Low Professor of the University, a member of the Law School faculty, and one of the nation's foremost First Amendment scholars. Bollinger is the author or co-editor of numerous books on freedom of speech and press, including
Regardless of Frontiers: Global Freedom of Expression in a Troubled World (2021),
The Free Speech Century (2018), and
Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open: A Free Press for a New Century (2010).
President Bollinger is a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board and a co-founder of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, a center devoted to defending speech and press freedoms in the digital age through litigation, scholarship, and public education. In 2014, he established Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, a project that brings together experts and activists with faculty and students to advance understanding of international norms that protect expression and the free flow of information. He served as president of the University of Michigan from 1996 to 2002 and led the school's historic litigation in
Grutter v. Bollinger and
Gratz v. Bollinger, Supreme Court decisions reasserting that diversity is a compelling justification for affirmative action in higher education. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Bollinger is also the recipient of multiple honorary degrees from universities in the United States and abroad.
Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stone is the author or co-author of many books on constitutional law. Among them are
Democracy and Equality: The Enduring Constitutional Vision of the Warren Court (2020),
The Free Speech Century (2018);
Sex and the Constitution (2017);
Top Secret: When Government Keeps Us In the Dark (2007); and
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (2004). In 2013, President Obama appointed Mr. Stone to serve on a five-member Review Group on National Security Intelligence in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks about the NSA. The result was
The NSA Report, which included 46 recommendations for improving the nation's foreign intelligence programs, many of which have been adopted and put into place. Thereafter, Mr. Stone served as a Senior Advisor to the Director of National Intelligence.
