Parties: Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart
Date: 1984-05-21
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Paragraph: 20 - A litigant has no First Amendment right of access to information made available only for purposes of trying his suit. Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 16-17, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 1280-1281, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965) N181* ("The right to speak and publish does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information")
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Paragraph: 19 - It does not necessarily follow, however, that a litigant has an unrestrained right to disseminate information that has been obtained through pretrial discovery. For even though the broad sweep of the First Amendment seems to prohibit all restraints on free expression, this Court has observed that "[f]reedom of speech . . . does not comprehend the right to speak on any subject at any time." American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 394-395, 70 S.Ct. 674, 681-682, 94 L.Ed. 925 (1950). The critical question that this case presents is whether a litigant's freedom comprehends the right to disseminate information that he has obtained pursuant to a court order that both granted him access to that information and placed restraints on the way in which the information might be used. In addressing that question it is necessary to consider whether the "practice in question [furthers] an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of expression" and whether "the limitation of First Amendment freedoms [is] no greater than is necessary or essential to the protection of the particular governmental interest involved." Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396, 413, 94 S.Ct. 1800, 1811, 40 L.Ed.2d 224 (1974); see Brown v. Glines, 444 U.S. 348, 354-355, 100 S.Ct. 594, 599-600, 62 L.Ed.2d 540 (1980); Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 25, 96 S.Ct. 612, 637-638, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976).
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Paragraph: 20 - A litigant has no First Amendment right of access to information made available only for purposes of trying his suit. Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 16-17, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 1280-1281, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965) N166* ("The right to speak and publish does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information"). Thus, continued court control over the discovered information does not raise the same specter of government censorship that such control might suggest in other situations.
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Phrase match: The right to speak and publish
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Paragraph: 20 - A litigant has no First Amendment right of access to information made available only for purposes of trying his suit. Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 16-17, 85 S.Ct. 1271, 1280-1281, 14 L.Ed.2d 179 (1965)N96* ("The right to speak and publish does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information"). Thus, continued court control over the discovered information does not raise the same specter of government censorship that such control might suggest in other situations. See In re Halkin, 194 U.S.App.D.C., at 287, 598 F.2d, at 206-207 (Wilkey, J., dissenting). Moreover, pretrial depositions and interrogatories are not public components of a civil trial. Such proceedings were not open to the public at common law, Gannett Co. v. DePasquale, 443 U.S. 368, 389, 99 S.Ct. 2898, 2910, 61 L.Ed.2d 608 (1979), and, in general, they are conducted in private as a matter of modern practice. See id., at 396, 99 S.Ct., at 2913-2914 (BURGER, C.J., concurring); Marcus, Myth and Reality in Protective Order Litigation, 69 Cornell L.Rev. 1 (1983). Much of the information that surfaces during pretrial discovery may be unrelated, or only tangentially related, to the underlying cause of action. Therefore, restraints placed on discovered, but not yet admitted, information are not a restriction on a traditionally public source of information.
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Paragraph: 19 - It is, of course, clear that information obtained through civil discovery authorized by modern rules of civil procedure would rarely, if ever, fall within the classes ofunprotected speech identified by decisions of this Court. In this case, as petitioners argue, there certainly is a public interest in knowing more about respondents. This interest may well include most—and possibly all—of what has been discovered as a result of the court's order under Rule 26(b)(1). It does not necessarily follow, however, that a litigant has an unrestrained right to disseminate information that has been obtained through pretrial discovery. For even though the broad sweep of the First Amendment seems to prohibit all restraints on free expression, this Court has observed that N148* "[f]reedom of speech . . . does not comprehend the right to speak on any subject at any time."
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