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''Near v. Minnesota'', 283 U.S. 697 (1931), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision that recognized the freedom of the press by roundly rejecting prior restraints on publication, a principle that was applied to free speech generally in subsequent jurisprudence. The Court ruled that a Minnesota law that targeted publishers of "malicious" or "scandalous" newspapers violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment). Legal scholar and columnist Anthony Lewis called ''Near'' the Court's "first great press case". It was later a key precedent in ''New York Times Co. v. United States'' (1971), in which the Court ruled against the Nixon administration's attempt to enjoin publication of the Pentagon Papers. ==Background of the case== In 1927, Nina Harris, who has been described as "anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-black and anti-labor"〔By Fred W. Friendly in ''Minnesota Rag: Corruption, Yellow Journalism, and the Case That Saved Freedom of the Press'', his book on the case.〕 began publishing ''The Saturday Press'' in Minneapolis with Howard A. Guilford, a former mayoral candidate who had been convicted of criminal libel. The paper claimed that Jewish gangs were "practically ruling" the city along with the police chief, Frank W. Brunskill, who was accused of participation in graft. Among the paper's other targets were mayor George E. Leach, Hennepin County attorney and future three-term governor Floyd B. Olson, and the members of the grand jury of Hennepin County, who, the paper claimed, were either incompetent or willfully failing to investigate and prosecute known criminal activity. Shortly after the first issue was distributed, Guilford was gunned down and hospitalized, where a further attempt on his life was made. At least one of the stories printed in ''The Saturday Press'' led to a successful prosecution of a gangster called Big Mose Barnett who had intimidated a local dry cleaner by destroying his customers' clothing. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Near v. Minnesota」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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