All Floyd Abrams Quotes
It is not to benefit CBS, not to benefit its reporters. On this one, the entire basis of it is this is a way to get more information, more important information to the public. And that's why so many states recognize this.
Floyd Abrams
83% of people like this quote
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
55% of people like this quote
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
54% of people like this quote
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.
Floyd Abrams
54% of people like this quote
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
53% of people like this quote
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
53% of people like this quote
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
52% of people like this quote
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.
Floyd Abrams
52% of people like this quote
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
51% of people like this quote
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
50% of people like this quote
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
50% of people like this quote
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
48% of people like this quote
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.
Floyd Abrams
48% of people like this quote
It's not like learning how to hit a curve ball in baseball.
Floyd Abrams
48% of people like this quote
I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
Related authors