The judges were Edward Brooke, US Senator, Massachusetts; Nat Hentoff, author and columnist, The Village Voice; Fay Kanin, president, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Judith Krug, director, The American Library Association; and Charles Nesson, Dean, Harvard Law School.
The judges were Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, partner, Kutak, Rode & Huie; Hamilton Fish III, Publisher, The Nation; Florence McMullin, Chair, The Washington Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee; and Aryeh Neier, Professor of Law, New York University.
The judges were Harriet Pilpel, attorney, Weil, Gotshal & Manges; Studs Terkel, author and nationally syndicated radio show host; and William Worthy, international journalist and civil liberties activist.
The judges were Arthur Kropp, president, People for the American Way; Barry Lynn, Co-host, Battleline news radio talk show; Eve Pell, investigative journalist, Freedom of Information Project; and Tom Wicker, political columnist, The New York Times.
[7] The judges were Ted Boutros, partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and global co-chair of the firm's Litigation Group; and Kyle Pope, editor-in-chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.
The judges were Allison Stanger, Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College; Julia B. Chan, editor-in-chief of The 19th, an independent, nonprofit newsroom; and Will Creeley, Legal Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).