In a country founded on the principles of democracy, the law and those that make it are required to respect the ideals and values of the public. Values like liberty, equality, and freedom of expression are heavily protected while also constantly being interpreted in everyone’s best interests. Although the Supreme Court has the ability to find a compromise between the government and the people, many important cases have been decided with the Supreme Court declaring one side wholly unconstitutional in its actions, thus defining a new area of law. One such case is the 1971 New York Times Co. v. United States, when the Supreme Court had to decide between the right of the press to publish freely without being censored and the government’s need to protect its secrets (“New York Times Co. v. United States” Wikipedia 1). In a 6-3 decision, New York Times Co. v. United States was resolved with the Supreme Court rightly defending the press’s liberty to publish without any unjustifiable restraints from the government and affirming the value that the press serves as a “watchdog” whenever our government tries to go beyond the Constitution. Forty years prior to New York Times Co. v. United States, there was Near v. Minnesota, an important precedent case that helped defend the NY Times (“Near v. Minnesota” Wikipedia 1). In this 1931 case, the reporter Jay M. Near of the Saturday Press published a story that called out several legislators and politicians in Minnesota as “either incompetent or willfully failing to investigate and prosecute known criminal activity” (“Near v. Minnesota” Wikipedia 2). In response to this, one of the accused, Floyd B. Olson, asked for a restraint on the publishing of Near’s paper, under the Public Nuisance Law (“Near v. Minnesota” Wikipedia 2). This law, also known as the “Minnesota Gag Law”, prevented any malicious or as deemed scandalous publications in newspaper, which Olson and the other accused stated was a violation of this law (“Near v. Minnesota” Wikipedia 2). This case was fought all the way to the Supreme Court where they decided on a 5-4 vote that this law (“Near v. Minnesota” Wikipedia 3). Much like New York Times Co. v. United States, Near was battling the issue of the government’s power over the press’s right to speak out when it sees something wrong. In this way, Daniel Ellsberg too wished to reveal the wrongs he was seeing after contributing to a secret study on the overall involvement of the US in the Vietnam War (“Daniel Ellsberg” Wikipedia 2). Daniel Ellsberg, who had returned from a tour in Vietnam, was assigned to help compile what would later become the Pentagon Papers under the commission of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (“Daniel Ellsberg” Wikipedia 2). Ellsberg eventually came to realize that he was compiling was a long history of the US’s involvement and deception of the public in and leading up to the Vietnam War. Having already anti-war sentimen