All Floyd Abrams Quotes
CBS exhausted the Texas courts. They went from the trial court to the intermediate court to the highest court.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
I really did try to write it so that an educated public that cares about issues like this doesn't have to be a lawyer and can read it and understand it.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
This is going right to the police. So, it's a very dangerous precedent.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
The principle though remains the same, and the important thing is CBS fought hard, very hard, to protect that principle and will fight again.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
I just had the sense that at least the books that I had read about law just didn't really have enough of that.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
Were this not Texas, were there not a state where there were no protections at all and where the law was clear on that, I think CBS and Mary Mapes and Dan Rather and all of us had a very good chance of winning. So this is an ongoing battle about an issue of principle.
Floyd Abrams
47% of people like this quote
I really try at least to come back and answer the question as to whether that was really the best way to do that and was I really thinking straight and how did my opponents behave and how did the judges behave was needed.
Floyd Abrams
46% of people like this quote
CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not a police agent.
Floyd Abrams
44% of people like this quote
I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.
Floyd Abrams
41% of people like this quote
If the word gets out, if the perception exists that by speaking to a CBS journalist you are, therefore, inevitably, immediately speaking to the police, I don't think there's any doubt but that people won't talk. And, therefore, the public won't learn.
Floyd Abrams
28% of people like this quote
The government would be able to go to court with respect to newspaper articles, broadcast pieces and the like that they thought were bad or harmful or even against the government and try to block them.
Floyd Abrams
25% of people like this quote
I mean the idea of this is that it's a good thing for the public to hear interviews like this and that there will be an inevitable amount of fewer interviews if people that the press talks to wind up thinking, well, it's not really a CBS correspondent.
Floyd Abrams
4% of people like this quote
I know a lot of reporters certainly will go to jail to defend confidential sources. Some have even gone to jail for an issue like this. But I can't say that's the norm.
Floyd Abrams
4% of people like this quote
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