New York, NY, November 7, 2003…In recognition for his distinguished career as an attorney arguing prominent First Amendment cases, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) awarded Floyd Abrams the ADL Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. The award was presented during the League's 90th annual National Commission Meeting in New York City.
"Mr. Abrams is a tireless defender of the First Amendment," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "His record shows a deep-seated commitment to the ideals of freedom that the Framers envisioned and intimate knowledge of the importance the rights detailed in the First Amendment have to the survival of a healthy democracy. Mr. Abrams has been described, as being to First Amendment rights 'what Clarence Darrow was to the rights of the accused.' Nothing could be closer to the truth."
Floyd Abrams is a partner in the New York law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindel and is the William J. Brennan, Jr. Visiting Professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Mr. Abrams has argued in the Supreme Court in a large number of its most significant First Amendment cases. As a steadfast advocate for the freedom of speech he served as co-counsel to the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case and counsel to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in its legal battles with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He was Chairman of the Committee on Freedom of Speech and of the Press of the Individual Rights Section of the American Bar Association and of the Committee on Freedom of Expression of the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association.
The ADL Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize is endowed by Dwayne O. Andreas, President of the Andreas Foundation and is presented to institutions or individuals who, like Hubert Humphrey, have made significant and lasting contributions to the preservation and advancement of the ideals embodied in the First Amendment of the Constitution. Past recipients include Daniel Pearl (posthumous), Bernard Shaw, Wolf Blitzer, Arthur Miller, Barbara Walters, Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, William Safire, George Will, The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour and Meet the Press.
