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Sotomayor: Wikileaks' War Diaries Could Lead to Supreme Court Free Speech Ruling

by Matthew Zuras on August 27, 2010 at 02:50 PM

sonia sotomayor
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently spoke at the University of Denver, and suggested that Wikileaks' publication of the so-called Afghan War Diaries could result in a court case over free speech, reports the Guardian. Sotomayor said that the relationship between unfettered speech and national security has been "a constant struggle in this society, between our security needs and our First Amendment rights, and one that has existed throughout our history."

When prompted by a student about the cache of documents leaked by Julian Assange, Sotomayor replied that she could not answer because "that question is very likely to come before me." She added that the "incident, and others, are going to provoke legislation that's already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before [the Supreme Court.]"

Sotomayor compared the leak to the Pentagon Papers (a connection which many a jealous journalist tried to play down), saying that the damning Vietnam War documents did not represent "the beginning of that question, but an issue that keeps arising from generation to generation, of how far we will permit government restriction on freedom of speech in favor of protection of the country."

Tags: afghan war diary, AfghanWarDiary, first amendment, FirstAmendment, free speech, FreeSpeech, Julian Assange, JulianAssange, national security, NationalSecurity, Pentagon Papers, PentagonPapers, sonia sotomayor, SoniaSotomayor, supreme court, SupremeCourt, top, university of denver, UniversityOfDenver, wikileaks

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