Abrams' initial interest was in English law, which is less protective of free speech. As he learned more about the role that journalists can play at their best—and about the need to be critical of government—he became more enamored with the First Amendment.
Our understanding of the First Amendment is in flux. According to Abrams, these five cases have deeply shaped how freedoms of speech, press, and religion have come to be defined.
Abrams, who worked on the Pentagon Papers case, talks about how Julian Assange's exposés about U.S. policy are different from Daniel Ellsberg's revelations about Vietnam.
The U.S. has an "astonishing" and "breathtaking" degree of freedom for people, organizations, and institutions to have their say. Abrams talks about where this freedom meets its limits.
Floyd Abrams is one of the leading legal authorities on the First Amendment and U.S. Constitutional Law, having appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court. Abrams is the William J. Brennan Jr. Visiting Professor at the at Columbia University's journalism school. He is a partner with the firm Cahill, Gordon & Reindel.
In perhaps his most famous case, Abrams defended the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971 in which the paper published secret reports on U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967.
