National Security and the Press Part Six: Unanswered Questions About Free Speech

It is also plain that the protection of the rights granted under the constitution is not solely the domain of the courts: the executive and legislative branches have some obligation to use their powers to encourage protected values such as free speech as well. See Lawrence Gene Sager, Fair Measure: The Legal Status of Underenforced Constitutional Norms, 91 HARV. L. REV. 1212 (1978). This obligation is only made more powerful by the judicial reluctance to review and invalidate executive decision-making: where, as in military matters, the executive is not subject to external constitutional review, it has an added obligation to review and constrain its own actions to ensure that they do not violate the spirit or the letter of constitutional protections. Rana Jazayerli, Note, War and the First Amendment: A Call for Legislation to Protect A Press' Right of Access to Military Operations, 35 COLUM. J. TRANSNAT'L L. 131, 155-58 (1997) (arguing that because the Executive apparently has sole discretion for constitutional review of the national security