abridges the freedom of the press in violation of the First Amendment.

The Associated Press is engaged in collecting, editing and distributing news to its members, publishers of some 1300 newspapers throughout the United States. These newspapers represent many diverse policies and many differences in point of view. It, obviously, is essential that the news furnished should not only be without suppression but that it should be, as far as possible, free from color, bias or distortion. Such is the long-established policy of the Associated Press. If the Congressional act here involved, upon its face or in its present application, abridges the freedom of petitioner to carry its policy into effect, the act to that extent falls under the condemnation of the First Amendment. We shall confine ourselves to that question, the gravity of which is evident; but we do not mean thereby to record our assent to all that has been said with regard to other questions in the case.

The first ten amendments to the Constitution safeguard the fundamental rights therein mentioned from every form of unpermitted federal legislation. The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment protects the person against deprivation of life, liberty or property except by due process of law. "Liberty" is a word of wide meaning, and, without more, would have included the various liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353, 364, and cases cited; Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 243–245; Near v. Minnesota, 283 U. S. 697, 707; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510, 534–535.

But the framers of the Bill of Rights, regarding certain liberties as so vital that legislative denial of them should be specifically foreclosed, provided by the First Amend

ment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The difference between the two amendments is an emphatic one and readily apparent. Deprivation of a liberty not embraced by the First Amendment, as for example the liberty of contract, is qualified by the phrase "without due process of law"; but those liberties enumerated in the First Amendment are guaranteed without qualification, the object and effect of which is to put them in a category apart and make them incapable of abridgment by any process of law. That this is inflexibly true of the clause in respect of religion and religious liberty cannot be doubted; and it is true of the other clauses save as they may be subject in some degree to rare and extreme exigencies such as, for example, a state of war. Legislation which contravenes the liberties of the First Amendment might not contravene liberties of another kind falling only within the terms of the Fifth Amendment. Thus, we have held that the governmental power of taxation, one of the least limitable of the powers, may not be exerted so as to abridge the freedom of the press (Grosjean v. American Press Co., supra), albeit the same tax might be entirely valid if challenged under the "liberty" guaranty of the Fifth Amendment, apart from those liberties embraced by the First. Compare Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Mottley, 219 U. S. 467, 482-483.

No one can read the long history which records the stern and often bloody struggles by which these cardinal rights were secured, without realizing how necessary it is to preserve them against any infringement, however slight. For, as Mr. Justice Bradley said in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 635, "illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely,

by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure. It is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon. Their motto should be obsta principiis." "Experience should teach us," it was said in another case, "to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Olmstead v. United States, (dissent), 277 U. S. 471, 479. A little water, trickling here and there through a dam, is a small matter in itself; but it may be a sinister menace to the security of the dam, which those living in the valley below will do well to heed.

The destruction or abridgment of a free press—which constitutes one of the most dependable avenues through which information of public and governmental activities may be transmitted to the people-would be an event so evil in its consequences that the least approach toward that end should be halted at the threshold.

The grants of the Constitution always are to be read in the light of the restrictions. Thus, the exercise of the power to make laws on the subject of bankruptcies, the exercise of the war powers, of the power to tax, of the power to exclude aliens, or of the power to regulate commerce, is each subject to the qualified restrictions of the Fifth Amendment (Louisville Bank v. Radford, 295 U. S. 555, 589); as each, also, is subject, so far as appropriate, to the unqualified restrictions of the First. Congress has no power to regulate the relations of private employer and employee as an end in itself, but only if that be an appropriate and legitimate means to a constitutional end, which here is the regulation of interstate commerce. Assuming that the statute upon its face satisfies this test, does the

present application of it satisfy the requirement that the freedom of the press shall not be abridged?

Freedom is not a mere intellectual abstraction; and it is not merely a word to adorn an oration upon occasions of patriotic rejoicing. It is an intensely practical reality, capable of concrete enjoyment in a multitude of ways day by day. When applied to the press, the term freedom is not to be narrowly confined; and it obviously means more than publication and circulation. If freedom of the press does not include the right to adopt and pursue a policy without governmental restriction, it is a misnomer to call it freedom. And we may as well deny at once the right of the press freely to adopt a policy and pursue it, as to concede that right and deny the liberty to exercise an uncensored judgment in respect of the employment and discharge of the agents through whom the policy is to be effectuated.

In a matter of such concern, the judgment of Congressor, still less, the judgment of an administrative censor-cannot, under the Constitution, be substituted for that of the press management in respect of the employment or discharge of employees engaged in editorial work. The good which might come to interstate commerce or the benefit which might result to a special group, however large, must give way to that higher good of all the people so plainly contemplated by the imperative requirement that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press."

The present case illustrates the necessity for the enforcement of these principles. The board found, in effect, that the actual reason for Watson's discharge was his activity as a member of a labor organization in the furtherance of its aims. Accepting this as a true statement. of the reason for the discharge, let us consider the question from the standpoint of that finding; although, as already indicated, we are of opinion that the constitutional im

munity of the press does not permit any legislative restriction of the authority of a publisher, acting upon his own judgment, to discharge anyone engaged in the editorial service. Such a restriction of itself would be an abridgment of the freedom of the press no less than a law restricting the constitutional liberty of one to speak would be an abridgment of the freedom of speech.

For many years there has been contention between labor and capital. Labor has become highly organized in a wide effort to secure and preserve its rights. The daily news with respect to labor disputes is now of vast proportions; and clearly a considerable part of petitioner's editorial service must be devoted to that subject. Such news is not only of great public interest; but an unbiased version of it is of the utmost public concern. To give a group of employers on the one hand, or a labor organization on the other, power of control over such a service is obviously to endanger the fairness and accuracy of the service. Strong sympathy for or strong prejudice against a given cause or the efforts made to advance it has too often led to suppression or coloration of unwelcome facts. It would seem to be an exercise of only reasonable prudence for an association engaged in part in supplying the public with fair and accurate factual information with respect to the contests between labor and capital, to see that those whose activities include that service are free from either extreme sympathy or extreme prejudice one way or the other. And it would be no answer to say that dealing with news of this character constitutes only a part of the duties of the editorial force. The interest of a juror, for example, in the result, which excludes him from sitting in a case, may be small and the adverse effect upon his verdict by no means certain. Nevertheless, the party affected cannot be called upon to assume the hazard. In the present case, by a parity of reasoning, the hope of benefit to a cherished cause which may bias the edi