As the Trump administration seeks to persuade English judges to extradite Julian Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on charges of violating the Espionage Act, it is difficult not to have conflicting reactions. Some of Assange's revelations have not only been odious but also dangerous. But trying him under the Espionage Act itself endangers reputable journalists as well and the ability of the public to be informed by them.

Assange has certainly engaged in appallingly disturbing conduct by publishing in WikiLeaks, of which he was a co-founder and which he controls, certain highly classified documents that had been illegally been made available to him in 2010 by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

Yet if Assange can be jailed for publishing such information, far more responsible journalistic endeavors could also be put at risk for publishing classified information that the public would be well served in learning about.

Some of the documents made public by Assange and identified in the Assange indictment have been literally life-threatening. They identify Afghans and Iraqis who provided confidential information of military value to the U.S. and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan that, if attributed to them, could have imperiled them.

Others identified individuals, including human-rights workers, named in classified State Department cables, who provided confidential information to the U.S. in circumstances in which their identification could also have been life-threatening.

So outrageous was Assange's conduct in making information of this sort available to enemies of the U.S. that responsible newspapers throughout the democratic world that had previously worked with WikiLeaks — The New York Times, The Guardian, El Pais, Der Spiegel and Le Monde — issued a joint statement "deploring" and "condemning" the misconduct of Assange and WikiLeaks.

It should come as no surprise that similar misconduct by Assange and WikiLeaks continued well after the 2010-11 time period covered by the Assange indictment. According to indictments obtained by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of Russian GRU operatives with respect to their hacking of confidential documents from the Democratic National Committee in 2016, the Russians discussed with WikiLeaks the "release of the stolen documents and the timing of those releases ... to heighten their impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election."

In fact, so actively did WikiLeaks work with Russian operatives with respect to their efforts to interfere in the 2016 election that private messages sent by WikiLeaks urged the Russians to send the stolen DNC documents to them "for us to review" since it would "have a much higher impact" if released by WikiLeaks than anything the Russians themselves could do.

The dangers posed by some of WikiLeaks' revelations are real. But there are dangers of a different sort in using the Espionage Act to punish Assange. That law, adopted a century ago, is phrased, as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan put it, in "singularly opaque" language.

If it can be used against Assange for publishing classified information that is potentially harmful to the country, it might just as easily be used against responsible publications such as those that criticized Assange when they receive and publish classified information that benefits the nation by revealing government misconduct.

In fact, if any publication of such material risked Espionage Act prosecutions, there is good reason to fear that a serious blow would have been struck at many journalists who cover national security issues, defense issues and intelligence issues. That concern is what led the Obama administration not to indict Assange for some of the very crimes of which he has now been charged.

Should Assange have been indicted under the Espionage Act? He has acted recklessly. But the decision of the Obama administration not to indict him was not only more prudent but more consistent with First Amendment norms.

Floyd Abrams, America's preeminent First Amendment litigator, has defended the right to free speech for nearly half a century in cases ranging from the 1971 Pentagon Papers case to 2010's Citizens United vs. FEC. He is the author, most recently, of The Soul of the First Amendment. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.