Julian Assange - A Lawyer's Dream Come True?

Geoffrey Robertson QC, the famous human rights lawyer who is originally Australia but emigrated to england and now lives there permanently has reportedly spoken with Julian Assange about his case. Robertson is known as a powerful advocate of democratic rights and a strong supported of Julian Assange and his Wikileaks website because of its ability to make governments more accountable for their actions and decisions. Robertson has written articles in support of Assange. Other celebrities have lent their support to assange as well with figures such as John Piliger, the renound journalist offering bail and Jemima Kahn speaking to journalists about the imprisonment of Mr Assange.

Freedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws. Some of the numberous cases in America which have upheld the right to freedom of spech in the USA under the first amendment include American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft (2002). Some of the caselaw which has dealt with freedom of speech which potentially undermines national security is the case of In New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the US Supreme Court declared "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history." 376 U.S. 254, 276 (1964). In that case, the Sedition Act of 1918 which had been enacted to prevent speech against the United States by people inside the USA was not actually tested.

Later on, a principle emerged that 'prior restraint' is likely to be unconsitutional. The 1931 Near v. Minnesota case was the first to establish the doctrine that prior restraint was in most cases unconstitutional. Prior restraint is censorship which prevents material from being published in the first place. In more modern times, in 1991, during the U.S.-led UN invasion of Iraq during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, The Pentagon placed restrictions on media coverage of the ground war to protect confidential military information. This was never tried as being unconsitutional and was accepted completely as a legal supression of information about the war.