Floyd Abrams
First Amendment Lawyer

Floyd Abrams is Senior Counsel at the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP and a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale Law School. He is the author of “Friend of the Court: On the Front Lines with the First Amendment” (2013) and “Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment” (2005). His latest book, “The Soul of the First Amendment,” was published by the Yale University Press in 2017.

Mr. Abrams was described by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the floor of the US Senate as “the most significant First Amendment lawyer of our age.” Yale Law School Dean Robert Post has called him “the Dean of the First Amendment lawyers in the United States” and said that “no lawyer has exercised a greater influence on the development of First Amendment jurisprudence in the last four decades.” The Deputy Council of The New York Times recently described him in his book “Truth in Our Times” as “the lawyer who has made the single greatest contribution to press freedom in our lifetime.”

Abrams has argued frequently in the Supreme Court in a large number of its most significant First Amendment cases. He was co-counsel to The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case; counsel to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in its legal battles with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; counsel to Senator Mitch McConnell, as amicus curiae, in Citizens United case and argued orally in that successful First Amendment-rooted challenge to the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation. He has served as counsel to many journalists, including Judith Miller and Myron Farber, who sought to protect the identity of their confidential sources. He has represented The New York Times, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Time Magazine, Business Week, The Nation, Reader’s Digest, The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., and numerous other clients in trials and appeals.

Mr. Abrams graduated from Cornell University in 1956 and the Yale Law School in 1960. He served from 1994 to 2009 as the William J. Brennan, Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Nadine Strossen
Professor

Nadine Strossen, Professor of Law at New York Law School, has written, lectured and practiced extensively in constitutional law, civil liberties and international human rights. Since 1991, she has served as President of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first woman to head the nation’s oldest and largest civil liberties organization.

The National Law Journal has named Ms. Strossen one of America’s “100 Most Influential Lawyers.” Her book Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rightswas named by the New York Times a Notable Book of 1995. Her co-authored book Speaking of Race, Speaking of Sex: Hate Speech, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties was named an “outstanding book” by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America.