Three Cheers! ...

Three cheers to the PEN American Center, Arcade Publishing, and other groups which have filed suit in a New York federal district court to overturn federal Office of Assets Control which bar the publication of work produced by writers in countries ruled by regimes hostile to the United States. Those countries include Iran, Sudan, Cuba, North Korea, and, until recently, Iraq. Under those restrictions, the work of Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, cannot be published here. She is a party to the lawsuit, saying that the regulations prevent American publishers from aiding the writing of her memoir about survival in Iran's Islamic revolution and defending human rights in Iranian courts. The Seattle Times has the fuller story.

A spokesperson for the Treasury Department, where OAC is housed, described the regulations as"a very important part of our overall national security. These are countries that pose serious threats to the United States, to our economy and security and our well-being around the globe." She noted that American publishers can produce the work of writers from enemy countries so long as they are licensed to do so by OAC. Earlier, I asked Eugene Volokh for a reaction to this case. He was"too swamped" at the moment to do so, but hoped to have time later to post about it. The Seattle Times story indicates that another conservative legal authority, Douglas Kmiec, now a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine who served as a legal counsel in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, believes that the government regulations will not survive the legal challenge. He says that the First Amendment — and subsequent court rulings — generally preclude the government from restricting publications before they are produced."It does allow for limitations where there are clear and present dangers and compelling foreign policy or other interests that can be tangibly and authentically demonstrated. But short of that special application and very rare circumstance, government censorship is properly off-limits. These efforts to restrain in advance are almost sure to fail." Hat tip to Moby Lives.