A president who intends to prosecute journalists, deport student protesters, imprison flag-burners, shut down broadcasters and throw the book at whistleblowers – to list just a few of president-elect Donald Trump’s speech-suppressive ideas – is likely to collide very quickly with the first amendment.

But whether the first amendment will be a real obstacle to Trump’s censorial agenda is difficult to predict. Some of Trump’s ideas will require the US supreme court to address free speech questions it has long avoided, while others will implicate precedents that the court may be eager to revisit. Trump has already appointed three of the court’s justices and he may have the opportunity to appoint more – at a time when the very meaning of free speech is deeply contested. So, yes, Trump will run up against the first amendment, but don’t take for granted that he will be thwarted by it.

Consider, first, the constellation of questions at the intersection of press freedom and national security. The supreme court decided half a century ago, in what is still regarded as one of its most important press-freedom rulings, that the first amendment didn’t permit the government to block the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified history of the Vietnam war. Even as it barred the government from stopping the presses, though, the court left open the possibility that reporters and publishers might be prosecuted after the fact. The Nixon administration seriously considered filing those charges, though it ultimately went........

© The Guardian