Every textbook in psychology will have, under “perception” or “cognition,” a small picture of what looks like a black-and-white silhouette. The viewer may look at the picture and see an urn, in white, against a background of black. Or that is what the viewer may see until it is pointed out that the shape on the page might also appear to be a woman wearing a large hat. The figure is used to illustrate the tricks of perception, and often, once the viewer finally sees in the shapes the woman with the hat, he or she can no longer see the urn. I would suggest that something like that has been at work over the years with Near v. Minnesota (1931) and its lingering effects on our law. Chief Justice Hughes and four of his colleagues looked at the case, involving the trial of libels in a lurid scandal sheet, and the use of an injunction to restrain publication. And what they saw was an instance, or example, of “prior restraint.” Justice Butler and three other colleagues looked at the same case and saw nothing that really fitted the model of “previous restraints” on publication. The force of their dissent was that Hughes had seriously misconceived the character of the case before him. In describing the case inaccurately (the argument might continue) Hughes and his colleagues had failed to see the parts of the case that were quite novel, and which gave this case its moral or jural significance.