Floyd Abrams Quotes
I think that the very fact that CBS fought and fought and fought in Texas, in New York.
Abrams, Floyd. Interview with Charlie Rose. Charlie Rose, PBS, 27 May 1999.
Twenty year prison sentences were imposed for publishing left wing Bolshevik literature. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court:
Referring to the 1989 National Foundation for the Arts censorship regulations requiring grantees to sign an agreement regarding the content of their work:
A teacher had been arrested and threatened with jail because he had taught Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in a high school science class. The ACLU paid for famed attorney, Clarence Darrow, to defend Scopes in the famous trial that exposed the ignorance and bias of the schools that prohibited teaching about evolution as it contravened the Protestant fundamentalist Biblical version of the creation of humans. While the ACLU had a major victory, even today many school systems—mostly in the South—still prohibit such teaching and while no teacher can be jailed, they can be fired for not following the curriculum of the local school board.
She was referring to the slander that was commonly used by her fellow Republican, Senator Joseph P. McCarthy in his demagoguery. She was the first member of the Senate to Condemn McCarthy for his abuse and lies. Led by her example, the other senators got over their fear of McCarthy attacking them and the Senate Censured the Demagogue.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. Twain was a much sought after public speaker in an era before TV and radio. Some speeches like this he delivered many times in many places.
The Masses was a left wing publication which the then Post Office officials decided were “dangerous”. Later, the Supreme Court would hold that there could not be this degree of political censorship by Post Office officials.
The exonerated based on the investigative work of some volunteer attorneys and law students. None of the miscarriages of justice were found or discovered by any law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, judges or officials of Texas. All the exonerated were released from jail where many had served decades for crimes they did not commit. 5 were released from Death Row—awaiting to be executed. Perry’s logic was that there was no problem because the 56 were released. For him, innocent people serving decades in Jail and sometimes waiting to be executed, did not constitute a problem. Of course, he assumed that the 56 cases of exhortation were the only cases of wrongful convictions in Texas. See {635340}.
Floyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and has argued 13 cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. Many of the arguments in briefs he has written have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment and free speech.
