Floyd Abrams Quotes

• I still owe a duty of loyalty to my clients and former clients, so I cannot specify which clients I did not especially find congenial, but the cause was the same.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Congenial, Client

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Interest, Circumstance

• I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lawyers, Case

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Confidential, Defendant, Interview, Agree

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Articulate, Speech, Principle

• The principle though remains the same, and the important thing is CBS fought hard, very hard, to protect that principle and will fight again.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Protect, Fought, Principle

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Winning, Protections, Principle

• I really did try to write it so that an educated public that cares about issues like this doesn’t have to be a lawyer and can read it and understand it.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lawyer

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Wins, Win

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Amendment, Trait, Speech

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Winning, Lawyers, Losing

• I mean the idea of this is that it’s a good thing for the public to hear interviews like this and that there will be an inevitable amount of fewer interviews if people that the press talks to wind up thinking, well, it’s not really a CBS correspondent.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Correspondent, Wind

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Opponents, Another, Answer

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Perception, Exists, Doubt

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Tags in Surprising, Amendment

• This is going right to the police. So, it’s a very dangerous precedent.

  Floyd Abrams

  Tags in Precedent

• The question at the end of the day was, the courts having found there was no defense, a producer about to go to jail, should CBS in effect tell the producer go to jail even though there is no law at all that we can use to get you out of jail?

  Floyd Abrams

  Tags in Jail, Defense

• The government would be able to go to court with respect to newspaper articles, broadcast pieces and the like that they thought were bad or harmful or even against the government and try to block them.

  Floyd Abrams

  Tags in Pieces, Broadcast, Harmful

• No other country in the world gives protection like that, but it is not absolute protection. People sometimes meet that high burden and win libel suits, and in those cases I think they ought to win.

  Floyd Abrams

  Tags in Libel, Burden

• 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.

  Floyd Abrams

  Tags in Staircase, Role

Floyd Abrams (31)

Birth:	9th July, 1936
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Lawyer

About

Floyd Abrams is 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.

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