Book reviews

Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment
Floyd Abrams ’59LLB
Yale University Press, $32.50

Reviewed by Lee Levine ’79JD

Lee Levine is a practicing lawyer and law professor. His latest book, The Progeny: Justice William J. Brennan’s Fight to Preserve the Legacy of New York Times v. Sullivan, will be published in early 2014.

During the last half-century, many noteworthy disputes about the scope and meaning of the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment have come before the US Supreme Court. Floyd Abrams, the most accomplished lawyer in this period representing those seeking to vindicate their constitutional right to free expression, has played a pivotal role in influencing the decisions rendered by the court. In the process, he has enhanced the freedom of expression enjoyed by all Americans.

Abrams’s accomplishments in this regard are chronicled in his first book, Speaking Freely (2005), focused on the cases and controversies in which he has represented clients. In the course of his law practice, Abrams has also developed and from time to time shared with the rest of us—in the form of articles, speeches, television appearances, and published interviews—his own conception of what the “freedom of speech, or of the press” means and the threats it faces, a conception born of practical experience and much more than a little hard thinking. Friend of the Court is a compendium of the best of that thinking, culled by the author and accompanied by a typically thoughtful essay as well as a series of newly minted observations in the form of introductory descriptions of each of the book’s thematically organized chapters. Even if you read some (or many) of these pieces when they were first published (as I have), the insights they contain are well worth revisiting. If you have not previously been exposed to Abrams’s writings about what the First Amendment protects and why, you will be hard pressed to find a better or more persuasive analysis.