If you're no fan of the Weekly's irreverent, aggressive, snarked-up style of journalism, you may have Floyd Abrams to blame, at least partly. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called him the “most significant First Amendment lawyer of our age,” and Abrams has certainly been at the center of many cases protecting freedom of the press, including Landmark Communications v. Virginia, Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart and The New York Times Co. v. United States (Pentagon Papers). This afternoon, Abrams delivers a speech at UC Irvine that is open to the public, so you can go give the 79-year-old a piece of your mind over helping infernal rags like this one flourish.
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Abrams is this year's Raymond Pryke First Amendment Law Lecture giver at UC Irvine School of Law. The annual series is made possible by the late Raymond Pryke, who owned and published Valleywide Newspapers based in Hesperia. His deep interest in protecting First Amendment rights led to his endowment of the Raymond Pryke Chair in First Amendment Law and the Pryke Lecture at UCI Law.
The speech does not represent a victory lap after a long and successful career as Abrams is still at it as a Cahill Gordon N Reindel LLP partner. Most recently, he prevailed in his argument before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell as amicus curiae, defending the rights of corporations and unions to speak publicly about politics and elections in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. He has also successfully represented tobacco companies in their lawsuits against the Food and Drug Administration over graphic warning labels on cigarette packs.
The event is set to run from 4:30-5:30 p.m. in the UCI School of Law, EDU 1131. Online registration to guarantee a seat in the audience is now closed, but the lecture will also be livestreamed and recorded for viewing afterward. Click here to check that out.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.