Lawyer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He studied at Yale Law School and at Columbia Law School (19816),and later became a visiting lecturer at Yale (197480). At New York's Cahill Gordon & Reindel, he argued more First Amendment and media cases before the US Supreme Court than any other lawyer in history.
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.
Abrams argued for
The New York Times and Judith Miller in the CIA leak grand jury investigation. Abrams joined Cahill Gordon & He is the father of MSNBC's Dan Abrams.
Personal
Abrams earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1956, and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1960.
Early career and legal scholarship
From 1961-63, Abrams clerked for Judge Paul Leahy of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.
Important First Amendment Cases
Abrams appearance before the Supreme Court as an advocate of the First Amendment has put him in a class of prominent and still-working legal scholars who have shaped American understanding of
their fundamental rights under the United States Constitution. Abrams said these cases showcase the work that has been done on free speech in the United States. Fellow Supreme Court attorney
Lee Levine, in a book review, wrote that "the modern history of the freedom of the press in this country is intimately associated with the career and work of Floyd Abrams." Award for
outstanding contribution to public discourse (1998) Learned Hand Award of the American Jewish Committee Thurgood Marshall Award of the New York State Bar Association William J. Gould Award for
outstanding appellate advocacy by the New York Office of the Appellate Defender (1997) Ross Essay Prize of the American Bar Association Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association
for his article The New Effort to Control Information, published in The New York Times. Ranked among the top two leading trial lawyers in New York for First Amendment Cases by
Chambers USA: Leading Lawyers for Business (2006) Who's Who in American Law 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by The National Law Journal (2006)
Criticism
In a column on
Slate entitled
Memo to Cooper and Miller: Fire Floyd Abrams's. Hire Bruce Sanford, Jack Schafer felt Abrams First Amendment argument was weaker than others on
behalf of the reporters in the Valerie Plame affair. Judges David Sentelle and David Tatel "manhandled" Abrams during the December 8, 2004 oral arguments before the appeals court. In the majority
opinion, Judge Sentelle found Abrams' assertion that a First Amendment privilege protects Matthew Cooper and Judith Miller from the subpoena to lack merit. "Maybe a First Amendment legend isn't
what this case called for in the first place," said Shafer. Shafer thought Abrams would never be successful at the Supreme Court: "...my guess is that they won't [agree to hear the case] if it's
argued on First Amendment grounds, preferring to let their
Branzburg precedent stand." "As a narrative matter, [
Speaking Freely] fails to explain how exactly Floyd Abrams, revered
champion of speech, could possibly have lost the [McCain-Feingold] case. The answer, for those readers left puzzled by Abrams's account, is not merely that the arguments on the other side that
soft money created the indelible appearance of a corrupt political system were immeasurably stronger than he allows; Indeed, much of the real story behind how McCain-Feingold came to be upheld is
that Abrams and Starr were simply outperformed as lawyers. It may be asking too much to expect Abrams to tell that particular story."
Quotes by Abrams
"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." "In August 1967 I spent a few days in New Delhi, visiting a friend who had been a law school classmate seven years earlier.
"I then described two of my favorite First Amendment cases, the first of which was the 1966 Supreme Court ruling in
Mills v.
Quotes about Abrams
"Ask someone to name a First Amendment lawyer. If they answer, one-hundred percent of the time the answer will be the same: Floyd Abrams. It is a sign of the times that the name Floyd Abrams
is synonymous with the First Amendment in a way that virtually no other name is." "[Floyd Abrams is the] most significant First Amendment lawyer of our age."
Selected writings
Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, published by Viking Press (2005)
Book reviews for Speaking Freely
"Most illuminating are Abrams's detailed explanations of the legal and psychological tactics he has used before the Supreme Court.... Abrams rarely steps back from his courtroom
reconstructions to make a more comprehensive argument for his nearly absolutist reading of the First Amendment. Only in describing his fight against the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law does
Abrams reason more broadly, and his powerful argument makes a reader wish the whole book had been more expansive." "Unfortunately, Abrams is far more fair-minded where the argument against a
free-speech claim is weak than he is where it's compelling.... It isn't too much, however, to expect as straightforward an account of the McCain-Feingold case as Abrams offers of other cases in
the book.
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