Floyd Abrams

Abrams is Jewish. He earned his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in 1956, and after trying to decide between a PhD in American History and Law, he decided to obtain his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1960.[1] He lives in New York City with wife Efrat Surasky.[2] Together they have a son, Dan Abrams of ABC, and a daughter, Judge Ronnie Abrams of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. He is a member of the Constitution Project's Liberty and Security Committee[3] and a patron of the Media Legal Defence Initiative.

From 1961 to 1963, Abrams clerked for Judge Paul Leahy of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. [4] He was also a Visiting Lecturer at Columbia Law School from 1981 to 1985.[5]

• William J. Brennan, Jr., 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. Brennan, Jr., Award of the Libel Defense Resource Center (1999)
• Milton S. Gould Award for outstanding appellate advocacy by the New York Office of the Appellate Defender (1997)
• Ross Essay Prize of the American Bar Association
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006)[6]
• 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 (2013)
• Lifetime Achievement Award by The National Law Journal (2013)
• Ronald K.L. Collins, Nuanced Absolutism: Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment (2013)
• Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award: Lifetime Achievement Award (2019)

• "In August 1967 I spent a few days in New Delhi, visiting a friend who had been a law school classmate seven years earlier. She was a princess—a genuine one, from a still-powerful regal family. In New York City, when we were studying together, I had taken her to a Yankee game. In New Delhi she reciprocated by taking me to her fortune-teller—not just hers, but that of a bevy of Indian leaders, including former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter and successor as prime minister, Indira Gandhi... Before I was thirty-five, he said, I would go to my country's capital to work on something that was important. The work, he said, would make me famous. It was not the sort of prediction that one entirely forgets. I was then thirty-one."[7]
• "I then described two of my favorite First Amendment cases, the first of which was the 1966 Supreme Court ruling in Mills v. Alabama... The other case was commenced by a Miami labor leader, Pat Tornillo, who was a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives. The Miami Herald had published editorials criticizing Tornillo; the union leader had responded by demanding that the Herald publish, verbatim, replies he had written to each editorial."[8]

• "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. Then ask them to name another such lawyer. The answer: silence. 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." First Amendment Center.[9]
• "[Floyd Abrams is the] most significant First Amendment lawyer of our age." Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.[10]

• Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, (Viking Press, 2005) ISBN 978-0-670-03375-1.
• Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment, (Yale University Press, 2013) ISBN 978-0300190878.
• The Soul of the First Amendment, (Yale University Press, 2017) ISBN 978-0300190885.

• "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." Publishers Weekly.[11]
• "Unfortunately, Abrams is far more fair-minded where the argument against a free-speech claim is weak than he is where it's compelling.... This is a serious flaw, and not just because it doesn't do justice to a complicated issue [like campaign finance reform].... 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. In general, his charming, engaging and often compelling book would have been stronger if he at any point revealed any real intellectual or emotional distance from a client's litigating position. Not all First Amendment claims are created equal." Benjamin Wittes, The Washington Post's Book World.[12]

• Cahill Gordon & Reindel
• List of prominent cases argued by Floyd Abrams
• Pentagon Papers
• Ronald K.L. Collins, Nuanced Absolutism: Floyd Abrams & the First Amendment (2013)

• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Floyd Abrams on Nightline at Google Videos
• Media file of Floyd Abrams talking about Speaking Freely
• Abrams is lawyer for S&P
• A film clip "The Open Mind - Taking the Fifth (1987)" is available at the Internet Archive
• A film clip "The Open Mind - Again, Rights in Conflict (1990)" is available at the Internet Archive