James Goodale
James C. Goodale was the vice president and general counsel for The New York Times and, later, the Times' vice chairman.
He is the author of Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles published by CUNY Journalism Press in 2013. The book was named twice as the best non-fiction book of 2013 by Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief of The Guardian, and Alan Clanton, editor of the online Thursday Review. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cited "Fighting for the Press" in its decision May 7, 2015, limiting the controversial National Security Agency domestic phone monitoring program.
He represented the Times in four of its United States Supreme Court cases, including Branzburg v. Hayes in which the Times intervened on behalf of its reporter Earl Caldwell. The other cases were New York Times v. Sullivan, New York Times Co. v. United States, and New York Times Co. v. Tasini. He was the leading force behind the Times' decision to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
After the Times' outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised the Times against publishing classified information and quit when the United States Justice Department threatened to sue the paper to stop publication, Goodale, who was attorney general for the Times, led his own legal team and directed the strategy that resulted in winning the Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. United States.
He has been called "the father of the reporter's privilege" because of his interpretation of the Branzburg case in the Hastings Law Journal. This led to the establishment of a reporter's privilege to protect reporter's sources in most states and federal circuits. Goodale created the specialty of First Amendment law among commercial lawyers. From 1972 to 2007, he established and chaired an annual Communications Law Seminar at the Practising Law Institute which through 2024 had over 21,000 attendees. This led to the creation of a First Amendment Bar. He continues to serve as the seminar's chairman emeritus.
After he left The New York Times in 1980, he joined the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York City. There he founded a corporate group and a litigation group dealing with media, intellectual property, communications, and the First Amendment. These groups have represented many well-known U.S. communication entities including the New York Times, CBS, and NBC.
He served as chairman of the board for the Committee to Protect Journalists from 1989-1994. During his tenure he built CPJ into a significant international force, instrumental in the release of imprisoned journalists around the globe and continued to serve as senior advisor.
From 1995 to 2010 he produced and hosted over 300 programs for Digital Age, a TV show on WNYE about the effect of the internet on media, politics and society.
Since 1977 he has taught First Amendment and Communications law at Yale, New York University and Fordham law schools and has authored over 200 articles in publications such as The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the Stanford Law Review. Columbia Journalism Review has listed James Goodale as one of 200 who shaped New York Media. He was named by Time magazine in 1974 as one of the rising leaders in the United States.
Goodale was the recipient of the "Champion of the First Amendment Award," from the American Bar Association Forum in February 2014.
On May 5, 2015, PEN America awarded the 2015 PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo. Many of Charlie Hebdo's magazine editors had been killed in a homegrown jihadist terrorist attack for publishing satirical cartoons about Prophet Muhammad previously published in a Danish newspaper.
The award caused an international controversy as to whether it should have been given to Charlie Hebdo. Over 200 writers signed a protest against the award and many withdrew from the PEN dinner at which the award was given. In reply to attack on the award given by him and his wife, Goodale said, "the award is not for what is said. It's for the right to say it. In this case, journalists got killed for what they said. They should be honored, and my wife and I are extremely proud to do that." Victor Navasky, publisher of The Nation wrote an article titled "Why I Support PEN’s Courage Award to ‘Charlie Hebdo’"
On November 13, 2025 Harper's Magazine inaugurated the . James Goodale personally presented the award to A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times, in recognition of his leadership in defending the freedom of the press in an era of misinformation and polarization.
Education and early career
Goodale was born July 27, 1933, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother, a college professor, was the daughter of the Shakespearean scholar Oscar James Campbell Jr. and he is the great grandson of Samuel Augustus Fuller. Goodale graduated from the Pomfret School and was an inductee in the Pomfret School Alumni Association’s Athletic Hall of Fame. He graduated Yale University in 1955, which he attended on the William Brinckerhoff Jackson Scholarship and where he was a member of Elihu a senior society. At Yale, he played on the baseball and hockey teams. In 2015 he was Recipient of the "George H.W. Bush '48 Lifetime of Leadership Award." He received his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1958, which he attended on a National Honor Scholarship.From 1959 to 1963, he worked for the Wall Street law firm of Lord Day & Lord. That firm was also the long time outside counsel of The New York Times. During this time he also served for six years in the Army Reserve as a strategic and intelligence research analyst, which influenced his views on over classification and convinced him it was not a crime to publish classified information.
The New York Times
At age 29, Goodale set up the legal department at The New York Times and subsequently became its first General Attorney in 1963. In 1964, the Supreme Court decided New York Times v. Sullivan 9–0 in favor of the New York Times, overturning a libel conviction and establishing the modern rules of libel for public figures.In 1967, Goodale spearheaded the financial reorganization of the Times. He advised the Times' publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger to purchase Cowles Communications, a transaction that helped the Times regain profitability. He also conceived and implemented the stock structure which was used to bring the New York Times public from a company in excess of $300 million to a diversified $3 billion company in 1990, a structure that was later copied by The Washington Post and other media companies.
Pentagon Papers
In March 1971, former Defense Department employee Daniel Ellsberg leaked top secret documents to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan that revealed the United States true agenda in the Vietnam war known as the Pentagon Papers. Executives at the Times argued for three months about whether to publish them or not. Harding Bancroft, the Senior Vice President, Sidney Gruson, Assistant to the Publisher, and the Times' outside counsel, Lord Day & Lord, advised the Times not to publish. Goodale successfully convinced publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger that the First Amendment protected the New York Times from prosecution for publishing classified information.On June 13, 1971, the Times printed its first articles and documents of the Pentagon Papers. When Attorney General John Mitchell indicated the Justice Department would sue the New York Times to stop any further publication, Lord Day & Lord refused to represent the Times and quit the night before the first court hearing. Goodale, along with the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and Yale Law School professor Alexander Bickel, defended the Times in court.
Goodale was the first to develop the now widely accepted arguments that the Espionage Act should not apply to publishers or the press. These arguments were later adopted after the Pentagon Papers trial by District Court Judge Murray Gurfein. After his decision, the Justice Department dropped the Espionage Act argument from the case.
In a 6–3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled the US government could not stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers, holding that prior restraints were barred by the First Amendment unless the publication "will surely result in direct, immediate, and irreparable damage to our Nation or its people."
Reporter's privilege
In January 1970, as part of a wave of subpoenas issued to national reporters, New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell was subpoenaed by the US Justice Department. Media organizations such as Newsweek, Time, and Life magazines complied with their subpoenas, but Goodale caused the New York Times and Caldwell to challenge Caldwell's subpoena. Caldwell and the Times argued in court he did not have to answer questions from a grand jury about the identity of his sources because, as a member of the press, he was protected by the First Amendment. Caldwell and the New York Times won in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, thereby establishing reporter's privilege for the first time in any court.In 1972, Caldwell v. United States was merged with two other similar cases at the Supreme Court and became known as Branzburg v. Hayes. Goodale crafted the media's strategy at the Supreme Court level. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned Caldwell's case and held reporters, in the circumstances of the case, do not have a First Amendment right to protect their sources and defy a subpoena. Justice Powell's concurrence with the majority was the swing vote.
Goodale subsequently wrote an article for the Hastings Law Journal in which he argued that Justice Powell's concurrence with the majority actually argued for a qualified reporter's privilege, "though, on its face, their ruling said just the opposite." He argued the Court's ruling was narrow and so the reporter's privilege should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
Using his article as a basis for protecting reporters' sources, he persuaded other media companies, such as Time, NBC, CBS, and The Washington Post to refuse to comply with government subpoenas. He argued using the power of contempt to resist requests for sources would cause state and federal courts, as well as state legislatures, to recognize a qualified reporters' privilege. This strategy succeeded, as over 1000 reporters privilege cases have been brought before state and federal court since his Hastings Law Review article, while only two or three were brought before. As of 2013, thirty nine states and the District of Columbia have some form of a reporter's shield law, ten other states have a common law privilege, and most federal circuits recognize a reporter's privilege as well—many using the language proposed in Goodale's law review article.
Goodale's interpretation of Powell's concurrence was confirmed in 2007, when notes of Powell's were discovered saying reporter's privilege cases should be decided on a case-by-case basis.
In October 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew subpoenaed reporters for the New York Times and Washington Post for its sources on a story detailing the confidential criminal investigation into Agnew's dealings when he was Governor of Maryland. Instead of complying with the subpoenas, Goodale devised a strategy whereby the reporters' notes would be given to New York Times publisher A.O. Sulzberger and Washington Post owner Katharine Graham and they would refuse to hand them over to the court. If Agnew wanted the reporters' notes, the judge would have to send the owners of the two biggest newspapers in the country to jail. Agnew's subpoenas were dropped after he resigned the Vice Presidency the following month.
In 1978, New York Times reporter Myron Farber was subpoenaed by a New Jersey state court in the murder trial of Dr. Mario Jascalevich and refused to testify on the advice of Goodale. He subsequently caused Farber and the Times to go into contempt of court. Farber spent 40 days in jail and the New York Times was fined a total of $101,000. The Governor later returned the fines and New Jersey passed a state law providing reporters a qualified privilege in response to the case.
Because of his work at the New York Times, his law review article and subsequent media law seminars, Goodale has been called the "father of reporter's privilege."