554
Opinion of the Court
distinction between prior restraints and subsequent punishments. Though petitioner tries to dismiss this distinction as "neither meaningful nor useful," Brief for Petitioner 29, we think it is critical to our First Amendment jurisprudence. Because we have interpreted the First Amendment as providing greater protection from prior restraints than from subsequent punishments, see Southeastern Promotions, Ltd. v. Conrad, 420 U. S. 546, 558-559 (1975), it is important for us to delineate with some precision the defining characteristics of a prior restraint. To hold that the forfeiture order in this case constituted a prior restraint would have the exact opposite effect: It would blur the line separating prior restraints from subsequent punishments to such a degree that it would be impossible to determine with any certainty whether a particular measure is a prior restraint or not.
In sum, we think that fidelity to our cases requires us to analyze the forfeiture here not as a prior restraint, but under normal First Amendment standards. So analyzing it, we find that petitioner's claim falls well short of the mark. He does not challenge either his 6-year jail sentence or his $100,000 fine as violative of the First Amendment. The first inquiry that comes to mind, then, is why, if incarceration for six years and a fine of $100,000 are permissible forms of punishment under the RICO statute, the challenged forfeiture of certain assets directly related to petitioner's racketeering activity is not. Our cases support the instinct from which
church censor. See generally T. Emerson, System of Freedom of Expression 504 (1970). Beginning with Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S. 697 (1931), we expanded this doctrine to include not only licensing schemes requiring speech to be submitted to an administrative censor for prepublication review, but also injunctions against future speech issued by judges. See Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Comm'n on Human Relations, 413 U. S. 376, 389-390 (1973) ("[T]he protection against prior restraint at common law barred only a system of administrative censorship. . . . [T]he Court boldly stepped beyond this narrow doctrine in Near"). Quite obviously, however, we have never before countenanced the essentially limitless expansion of the term that petitioner proposes.
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