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
rights people not-good-enough
It just seems to be a human trait to want to protect the speech of people with whom we agree. For the First Amendment, that is not good enough. So it is really important that we protect First Amendment rights of people no matter what side of the line they are on.
agreed amendment fight mayor result stop surely
Today's result is overdue. Mayor Giuliani should have never started this destructive fight with the First Amendment and should surely have agreed to stop it long ago.
act disclosure entity generally information obtaining protected
Where the disclosure is of newsworthy information and it is made by an entity that did not act illegally in obtaining the information, the disclosure is generally protected under the First Amendment.
delicate difficult great phone pick promises reluctance sort sources time
There is a great reluctance on the part of journalists..to pick up the phone and sort of badger sources into relieving them of the promises they made, especially at the time that the promises are most important, when the source is in trouble. This is a very difficult and very delicate area.
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.
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.
case dan happened
Here we have a situation where a defendant in a case agrees to an interview with Dan Rather. It happened to be not confidential. But it was an interview with Dan Rather.
exaggerate facts judges lawyers major players role
It has something to do with the facts and the law and who the judges are. So I think lawyers sometimes exaggerate their role in winning and losing. Lawyers do have a role, and a major role, but they're not the only players in this game.
defend preaching
I try to do that in this book without preaching - to try to do as you just said that you really have to defend the First Amendment rights of everybody.
answer behave best judges opponents straight whether
I really try at least to come back and answer the question as to whether that was really the best way to do that and was I really thinking straight and how did my opponents behave and how did the judges behave was needed.
case interest particular
There are some circumstances in which the First Amendment interest comes up against another interest that is really important and in which we have to make a decision in a particular case as to which is more important.
battle cbs chance clear dan good issue law mary ongoing rather state
Were this not Texas, were there not a state where there were no protections at all and where the law was clear on that, I think CBS and Mary Mapes and Dan Rather and all of us had a very good chance of winning. So this is an ongoing battle about an issue of principle.
believed believes cbs dan fought hard journalist people principle rather stake understand work
CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not a police agent.
case less people whether wins
I think that it is important for people to understand that whether a good-guy or a bad-guy wins a case is less important than what the law is that the case results in.