Minnesota's 'gag law' allowed courts to enjoin as a 'public nuisance' any 'malicious, scandalous, and defamatory' newspaper. The Court struck it down, holding prior restraints are 'the essence of censorship' and permissible only in the narrowest circumstances (troop movements, obscenity, direct incitement). Near is the constitutional bedrock of American press freedom and set up the Pentagon Papers case forty years later.