Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams
Floyd Abramsis an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment and free speech. He is the William J. Brennan Jr. Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionLawyer
CountryUnited States of America
thinking people police
If the word gets out, if the perception exists that by speaking to a CBS journalist you are, therefore, inevitably, immediately speaking to the police, I don't think there's any doubt but that people won't talk. And, therefore, the public won't learn.
years law lasts
It is within the last quarter century or thirty years. And a lot of that law has turned out to be very, very protective of the press and the public's right to know.
views freedom-of-speech important
So sometimes the facts are good and sometimes the facts are bad, the important thing from the point of view of a principle as broad and important as freedom of speech is that the courts articulate and set forth in a very protective way what those principles are.
new-york today video
I can tell you, having been in court today in New York, that the requests for the video outtakes have been dropped.
believe weight matter
I really believe that a lawyer - no matter how good - if he or she is really worth their weight in salt, they will lose some cases because, after all, it is not really one of those secretive things that not everything is decided by who your lawyer is.
country thinking would-be
I really do think that if we had lost that case we would really live in a country that would be really quite different.
real stories principles
I thought I could do that by telling stories of some of the cases that established those principles on a real life on the ground basis.
party government administration
The government understands - every government, every administration, both parties, understands - that that power, they just don't have.
condition continued employment required white
coerced and had been required as a condition for Libby's continued employment at the White House.
amendment america began freedom living press relates surprising within
When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory.
cases central playing younger
My role in it was not as central as it was in some of the later cases considering I was younger then and I was playing a role of co-counsel on the case.
book cases deals forty last problems serious shape thirty
I think we have some serious problems now, but, if you look back over the last thirty or forty years that my book deals with, I think we are in better shape now than we would have been if all of those cases had not come down.
inherently message miller sent viewed
The message you sent to me was viewed by Ms. Miller as inherently 'mixed,'
certainly extended jail journalist longest protecting reason served service
I know that the jail stay, which is the longest of any journalist in American history, was certainly not extended for any reason at all, ... and was served in the service of protecting her source.