Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment
In his long career, Abrams has been involved in most of the major cases challenging and defining free speech, from the Pentagon Papers to Citizens United to WikiLeaks. In this highly accessible collection of speeches, letters, testimony, and public debate, Abrams explores the landscape of free-speech issues in the U.S. during the past 50 years. He argues that free speech is not an ideological concept, noting its use by liberals to defend organized labor and civil rights and antiwar protestors and by conservatives to defend antiabortion protestors and corporate support for political candidates. Abrams devotes sections to press freedom, libel and privacy issues, international perspectives, national security, copyright laws in the Internet age, and free-speech conflicts in various presidential administrations, including those of Roosevelt, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush. Devoting an entire section to the Citizens United case, Abrams addresses criticism of his position in support of corporate free speech. In his final chapter, he reflects on complex free-speech issues that defy political ideology. --Vanessa Bush