The Constitution’s promises of freedom of speech and common defense can, at times, be at odds. One acute example of that tension is the prepublication review process, by which the government reviews written works by certain current and former employees to ensure that they do not contain classified or other sensitive information. While this process surely has its merits in preserving national security, it also presents authors with a bureaucratic thicket that is often difficult to navigate. This process is further complicated by the fact that the government can retroactively classify documents, meaning that information that authors might have thought was fair game is instead withdrawn from the public domain. The Supreme Court has addressed prepublication review only once, in Snepp v. United States. There, the Court validated the constitutionality of prepublication review but failed to articulate its reasoning in terms of established First Amendment doctrine. This Comment clarifies the standard of review applicable to prepublication review as an articulation of intermediate scrutiny.

Once that standard of review is established, this Comment applies it to the prepublication review process. With regard to substance, this Comment argues that, under intermediate scrutiny, the government does not have a sufficient national security justification to censor unclassified information during the prepublication review process. With regard to procedure, this Comment recommends that retroactive classification decisions during the prepublication review process should be subject to document-by-document review, that the burden-shifting framework to determine whether information is sufficiently public should begin by placing the onus on the government, and that authors’ legal claims arising from the process should not be mooted by completion of the review. Taken together, these clarifications and adjustments would subtly alter incentives to ensure that the prepublication review process equitably balances the interests of both the government and authors.

宪法对言论自由和共同防御的承诺有时会出现矛盾。这种紧张关系的一个突出例子是出版前审查程序，政府通过该程序审查某些现任和前任雇员的书面作品，以确保它们不包含机密信息或其他敏感信息。虽然这个过程在维护国家安全方面肯定有其优点，但它也给作者带来了往往难以驾驭的官僚主义丛林。由于政府可以对文件进行追溯分类，这一过程变得更加复杂，这意味着作者可能认为是公平游戏的信息被从公共领域撤回。最高法院在 Snepp v. United States 案中只处理过一次出版前审查。那里，法院证实了出版前审查的合宪性，但未能根据已确立的第一修正案原则阐明其推理。本评论阐明了适用于出版前审查的审查标准，作为中间审查的一种表述。

一旦建立了审查标准，本意见会将其应用于出版前审查过程。关于实质内容，该评论认为，在中间审查下，政府没有足够的国家安全理由在出版前审查过程中审查非机密信息。关于程序，本评论建议在出版前审查过程中追溯分类决定应接受逐个文件审查，确定信息是否充分公开的负担转移框架应首先将责任推给政府，并且作者在该过程中提出的法律主张不应通过完成审查来提出。综合起来，