In this New York University Journal of Law and Liberty article, constitutional historian Robert G. Natelson examines relevant evidence to determine whether, as some have argued, the original legal force of the First Amendment’s “freedom of the press” clause included a per se right to anonymous authorship. The Article concludes that, except in cases in which freedom of the press had been abused, it did. Thus, from an originalist point of view, Supreme Court cases such as Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which upheld statutes requiring disclosure of donors to political advertising, were erroneously decided in that respect.
