Editing Prior restraint (section)

==Anglo-American legal tradition==

===Blackstone and early views===
In [[William Blackstone]]'s ''[[Commentaries on the Laws of England|Commentaries]]'' "Freedom of the Press" is defined as the right to be free from prior restraints. According to Blackstone, a person should not be punished for speaking or writing the truth with good motives and for justifiable ends.  Truth alone, however, was not considered a sufficient justification, if published with bad motives.

{{blockquote|The liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state; but this consists in laying no previous restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity. (4 Bl. Com. 151, 152.)}}

This view was the common legal understanding at the time the [[U.S. Constitution]] was adopted. Only later have the concepts of [[freedom of speech]] and [[freedom of the press|the press]] been extended (in the [[United States]], the [[United Kingdom]], and other countries sharing their legal tradition) to protect honest error, or truth even if published for questionable reasons.{{cn|date=November 2023}}

===Judicial view===
Prior restraint is often considered a particularly oppressive form of [[censorship]] in Anglo-American jurisprudence because it prevents the restricted material from being heard or distributed at all.<ref name=Waldman>{{Citation | title = Prior Restraint And The Police: The First Amendment Right to Disseminate Recordings of Police Behavior  | url = https://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2014/1/Waldman.pdf | year = 2014 | author = Waldman, Jaqueline G. | journal = University of Illinois Law Review | pages = 311–345 | volume = 2014 | issue = 1 | access-date = 2014-04-13}}</ref>{{rp|318}}  Other forms of restrictions on expression (such as actions for [[libel]] or [[Slander and libel#Criminal|criminal libel]], [[slander]], [[defamation]], and [[contempt of court]]) implement criminal or civil sanctions only after the offending material has been published.  While such sanctions might lead to a [[chilling effect (term)|chilling effect]], legal commentators argue that at least such actions do not directly impoverish the [[marketplace of ideas]].<ref name=Waldman />{{rp|319}}  Prior restraint, on the other hand, takes an idea or material completely out of the marketplace. Thus it is often considered to be the most extreme form of censorship.<ref name=Waldman />{{rp|319}}  The [[United States Supreme Court]] expressed this view in ''[[Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart]]'' by noting:

{{blockquote|The thread running through all these cases is that prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights. A criminal penalty or a judgment in a defamation case is subject to the whole panoply of protections afforded by deferring the impact of the judgment until all avenues of appellate review have been exhausted. Only after judgment has become final, correct or otherwise, does the law's sanction become fully operative.}}

{{blockquote|A prior restraint, by contrast and by definition, has an immediate and irreversible sanction. If it can be said that a threat of criminal or civil sanctions after publication "chills" speech, prior restraint "freezes" it at least for the time.}}

Also, most of the early struggles for [[freedom of the press]] were against forms of prior restraint. Thus prior restraint came to be looked upon with a particular horror, and Anglo-American courts became particularly unwilling to approve it, when they might approve other forms of press restriction.