Floyd Abrams is a member of the Cahill Gordon & Reindel’s Executive
Committee and its litigation practice group.
Floyd has a national trial and appellate practice and extensive experience in high-visibility matters, often involving First Amendment, intellectual property, insurance, public policy and regulatory issues. He has argued frequently in the Supreme Court in cases, raising issues as diverse as the scope of the First Amendment, the interpretation of ERISA, the nature of broadcast regulation, the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold law, the impact of copyright law, and the continuing viability of the Miranda rule. His clients have included The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Time magazine, Business Week, The Nation, Reader's Digest, McGraw Hill, Hearst, AIG, and others in trials, appeals and investigations.
Floyd defended the Brooklyn Museum of Art in its legal battles with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; he represented two of the nation’s largest insurers in litigation under Section 17200 in California; he has represented one of the nation's largest credit rating agencies; and has frequently testified before congressional committees and prepared clients to do so. In 1998, he represented CNN in investigating and issuing a report on its broadcast accusing the United States of using nerve gas on a military mission in Laos in 1970 and again in 1999 in seeking to persuade the United States Senate to permit the public to view its deliberations as it determined whether or not to convict President Clinton of alleged high crimes and misdemeanors. He represented Nina Totenberg and National Public Radio in the 1992 "leak" investigation conducted by the United States Senate arising out of the confirmation hearing of Justice Clarence Thomas and, in 2004 and 2005, Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in their efforts to avoid revealing their confidential sources.
In 2006, Floyd was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an independent research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems advanced by its 4,600 elected members, who are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business and public affairs from around the world. In 1998, Floyd was the recipient of the William J. Brennan, Jr. Award for outstanding contribution to public discourse; the Learned Hand Award of the American Jewish Committee; and the Thurgood Marshall Award of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In November, 1999, he received the William J. Brennan, Jr. award of the Libel Defense Resource Center. Floyd was awarded, in 1997, the Milton S. Gould Award for outstanding appellate advocacy by the Office of the Appellate Defender in New York. Previously he had been awarded the Ross Essay Prize of the American Bar Association for his study of the Ninth Amendment of the United States Constitution. He has also received awards from, among others, the American Jewish Congress, Catholic University, the New York and Philadelphia Chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the National Broadcast Editorial Association.
The American Bar Association awarded Floyd its Certificate of Merit for his article published in The New York Times Magazine entitled "The New Effort to Control Information," which was described by the ABA as a "noteworthy contribution to public understanding of the American system of law and justice."
Described by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as "the most significant First Amendment lawyer of our age," Floyd is top-ranked by Chambers USA. He is listed in Who’s Who Legal, Who’s Who in American Law, and has again been named one of the “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America” by The National Law Journal (2006).
Floyd, who served as chairman of Mayor Edward Koch's Committee on Appointments, New York City, served as the chairman of the New York State Zenger Commemoration Planning Committee. Previously, he served as the chairman of the Communications Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, as well as 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.
He has appeared frequently on television on Nightline, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, and other programs and has published articles and reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Yale Law Journal, The Harvard Law Review, and elsewhere.
Floyd served on the Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Defense in 2003-4 and as the Chair of the New York State Commission on Public Access to Court Records in 2004.
Floyd is the William J. Brennan, Jr. visiting professor of First Amendment Law at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and author of Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment, published by Viking Press (2005).
Paul Bergman is professor of law emeritus at UCLA
Law School. He received his J.D. from UC Berkeley (Boalt Hall). Among the
books that Paul has written or co-authored are Reel Justice: The Courtroom
Goes to the Movies (2nd ed., 2006); Evidence Law and Practice (3rd
ed., 2007); Trial Advocacy in a Nutshell (4th ed., 2007); Lawyers as
Counselors: A Client Centered Approach (2nd ed., 2004); and three books
educating non-lawyers about the civil justice process, criminal laws and
processes, and depositions.
Paul’s articles related to law in film include “Emergency! Send a TV Show to Rescue Paramedic Services” (36 Univ. of Baltimore L. Rev. 347; selected for publication in the Entertainment, Publishing and the Arts Handbook of 2008 as “one of the best articles in the fields of entertainment, publishing and the arts of 2007.”) and “The Movie Lawyers' Guide to Redemptive Law Practice” (48 U.C.L.A. L. Rev. 1393; selected for publication in Lawyers' Ethics and the Pursuit of Social Justice (Susan D. Carle ed). Paul has given law and film presentations in dozens of venues, including The Today Show (NBC), Burden of Proof (CNN), the 8th Federal Circuit Judicial Conference, the American Bar Association, annual meetings of the Utah and New Mexico Bar Associations, the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), the American College of Trial Lawyers (ACTL) and the Women Law Judges Association.
David Black is an award-winning journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and
producer. His novel Like Father was named a notable book of the year by
the New York Times and listed as one of the seven best novels of the year
by the Washington Post. The King of Fifth Avenue was named a notable book
of the year by the New York Times, New York Magazine, and the AP.
Mr. Black received the Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination from the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime book for Murder at the Met. His second Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination was for "Happily Ever After," an episode of Law & Order. His third Edgar Allan Poe Award nomination was for “Carrier,” also an episode of Law & Order.
He won the Writers’ Guild of America Award for The Confession. He was also nominated for the Writers’ Guild of America Award for an episode of Hill Street Blues. He received an American Bar Association Certificate of Merit for “Nullification,” a controversial episode of Law & Order about Militia groups, which the Los Angeles Times called an example of “the new Golden Age of television.”
Among his other awards, he has received a National Endowment of the Arts grant in fiction, Playboy’s Best Article of the Year Award, Best Essays of the Year 1986 Honorable Mention, Forward’s Book of the Year Special Mention, and an Atlantic Monthly "First" award for fiction. He has also received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for The Plague Years, a book based on a two-part series that he wrote for Rolling Stone and that won a National Magazine Award in Reporting and the National Science Writers Award.
Researching articles, David Black has risked his life a number of times, including being put under house arrest by Baby Doc's secret police in Haiti, infiltrating totalitarian therapy cults, being abandoned on a desert island, and exposing a white slave organization in the East Village.
Among the television shows he has produced and written are the Sidney Lumet series 100 Centre Street, which was listed as one of the 10 best shows of the year, the Richard Dreyfuss series The Education of Max Bickford, Monk, CSI-Miami, the new Kojak, Hill Street Blues, EZ Streets, Miami Vice, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: Trial By Jury, the original Law & Order, which received an Emmy nomination for Best Dramatic Show and a Golden Globe nomination, and Copshop, an innovative PBS series filmed in one-take, three camera real time, which won a Prism Award in 2005. He has also been nominated for the PGA Golden Laurel Award.
His TV movie, Legacy of Lies, a drama about three generations of Jewish gangsters and cops in Chicago, which starred Eli Wallach and Martin Landau, won the Writers Foundation of America Gold Medal for Excellence in Writing. It also received an ACE Award for Martin Landau for Best Actor.
His feature, The Confession, starring Alec Baldwin, Ben Kingsley, and Amy Irving was praised in New York by John Leonard and in The Hollywood Reporter, among other places, and was described in Metroland as “an almost miraculous act of storytelling.”
He has published nine books and over 150 articles in magazines, including The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, and Rolling Stone. His new novel, An Impossible Life, has been praised by, among others, Nobel Prize winning author Czeslaw Milosz, Erica Jong, Bruce Jay Friedman, and Leslie Epstein, who called it the best writing about Jewish gangsters since Isaac Babel. Contemporary Authors describes Black as “a versatile, multi-media writer who has distinguished himself in both fiction and non-fiction.”
He has taught writing at Lehman College, Mt. Holyoke, and Harvard, where he is a scholar-in-residence at Kirkland House. He is also a former board member of the Mystery Writers of America and a member of the Century Association, the Williams Club, the Columbia Club, PEN, the Writers’ Guild, the Explorers’ Club, and the Players.
David Boies is the founder and chairman of Boies,
Schiller & Flexner LLP and is widely regarded as one of the nation's preeminent
trial lawyers. He has been named “Lawyer of the Year,” by the National Law
Journal, runner-up for “Person of the Year,” by Time magazine, and
“Commercial Litigator of the Year” by Who’s Who. When Mr. Boies received
the Milton Gould Award for Outstanding Oral Advocacy, the citation said in part,
“No lawyer in America has tried and argued on appeal as many landmark cases in
as many different areas as Mr. Boies.”
Among his current and recent work, Mr. Boies is lead counsel in defense of Maurice R. (“Hank”) Greenberg, former chairman and chief executive officer of American International Group Inc., and the C.V. Starr companies in connection with criminal, civil, and regulatory proceedings concerning the insurance industry. He obtained a favorable verdict as lead trial counsel on behalf of Lloyd’s of London and other insurers in a trial involving the availability of insurance relating to the World Trade Center attacks. He also currently represents American Express in an antitrust action against Visa, MasterCard, and several of their member banks seeking damages for anticompetitive practices that were declared unlawful in a suit brought by the United States Department of Justice.
Mr. Boies is perhaps best known for serving as lead counsel for former Vice President Al Gore in connection with the litigation relating to the 2000 Presidential election and for serving as special trial counsel for the United States Department of Justice in its successful antitrust suit against Microsoft. From 1991 to 1993, Mr. Boies was counsel to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in its litigation to recover losses for failed savings and loan associations. Mr. Boies also served as chief counsel and staff director of the United States Senate Antitrust Subcommittee in 1978 and chief counsel and staff director of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee in 1979.
Mr. Boies is the author of numerous publications including Courting Justice, published by Miramax in 2004, and Public Control of Business, published by Little Brown in 1977. He has taught courses at New York University Law School and Cardozo Law School.
Mr. Boies received an LL.D. from the University of Redlands, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the LD Access Foundation, the Outstanding Learning Disabled Achievers Award from the Lab School of Washington, D.C., and the William Brennan Award from the University of Virginia. He is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, and a trustee of St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital Medical Center and of Continuum Health Partners, Inc.
Benjamin L. Ginsberg represents numerous political parties, political campaigns, candidates, members of Congress and state legislatures, governors, corporations, trade associations, vendors, donors, and individuals participating in the political process. In both the 2004 and 2000 election cycles, Ginsberg served as national counsel to the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, playing a central role in the 2000 Florida recount. He served as national counsel and senior advisor to Mitt Romney*s presidential campaign in the 2008 cycle. He also represents the campaigns and leadership PACs of numerous members of the Senate and House, as well as the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee, and National Republican Congressional Committee. He serves as counsel to the Republican Governors Association and has wide experience on the state legislative level from directing Republican redistricting efforts nationwide following the 1990 Census and being actively engaged in the 2001-2002 round of redistricting. Ginsberg appears frequently on television commenting on law and politics. He also represents a variety of clients on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures on a range of issues. He began work in his current position at Patton Boggs in 1993 after serving for eight years as counsel to the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. He has advises on election law issues, particularly those involving federal and state campaign finance laws, ethics rules, redistricting, communications law, and election recounts and contests. He has been adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School in the Institute of Politics. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he earned his J.D. degree from Georgetown University. He and his wife, Jo Anne, live in Washington, D.C. and have two children, Josh and Rebecca.
Abner Greene is the Leonard F. Manning Professor of
Law at Fordham Law School. He graduated from Yale College (magna cum laude) and
from Michigan Law School (summa cum laude). He then clerked for Chief Judge
Patricia M. Wald on the D.C. Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens on the
U.S. Supreme Court. After practicing at Williams & Connolly in Washington,
D.C., Greene taught for three years at the University of Chicago Law School and
was a visiting professor at Cardozo Law School for a term, before joining the
Fordham faculty in 1994. He received tenure in 1996. Greene has published
widely in constitutional law, focusing on the First Amendment, in particular the
religion clauses and free speech. NYU Press published his book,
Understanding the 2000 Election. He is a highly respected educator, as
well, receiving Fordham’s Teacher of the Year award in 2002.
Mark Harris is the author of Pictures at a
Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. He writes
a column for Entertainment Weekly and has also written on pop culture for
several other publications, including the New York Times, Fortune,
the Guardian, and Slate.
Molly Haskell, author and critic, was a long-time
staff writer for the Village Voice, New York magazine and Vogue.
She has written for many publications, including the New York Times,
Esquire, the Nation, Town & Country, the Guardian, the
New York Observer and the New York Review of Books. She has
served as artistic director of the Sarasota French Film Festival, on the
selection committee of the New York Film Festival, as associate professor of
film at Barnard and as adjunct professor of film at Columbia University. In
2005, she was a host on Turner Classic Movies’ Essentials. Her books
include From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies
(1973; revised and reissued in 1989); a memoir, Love and Other Infectious
Diseases (1990); and, in 1997, a collection of essays and interviews,
Holding My Own in No Man's Land: Women and Men and Films and Feminists. Her
newest book, Frankly, We Do Give a Damn: Gone with the Wind Revisited,
will be published by Yale University Press in the Spring of 2009.
David Hugh Jones is a film and theater director with
numerous credits including “The Confession.”
Daniel M. Kimmel is a Boston-area film reviewer and
past president of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He has been reviewing for
the Worcester Telegram and Gazette since 1984. He also serves as the
Boston correspondent for Variety, the "Bible of Show Business" and as the
Boston Jewish Advocate's "Movie Maven." A former lawyer, he is a 1980
graduate of Boston University School of Law. Kimmel's byline has appeared in
numerous publications including the Christian Science Monitor, the
Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, Film Comment, and the
Internet Review of Science Fiction. He currently teaches at Suffolk
University as well as lecturing before various groups. His book on the history
of the FOX television network, The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules
and Reinvented Television was brought out by Ivan R. Dee, Publisher in June
2004 and received the Cable Center Book Award. His history of DreamWorks,
The Dream Team - The Rise and Fall of DreamWorks: Lessons from the New Hollywood,
was published in 2006. His latest, I'll Have What She's Having: Behind the
Scenes of the Great Romantic Comedies, was released in September of 2008.
Ron Klain is executive
vice president and general counsel of Revolution LLC, a private equity firm in
Washington D.C. that is chaired by Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL.
Mr. Klain is a graduate of Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, and began his legal career as a law clerk to Justice Byron R. White for the Supreme Court’s 1987 and 1988 terms.
At the end of his clerkship, Mr. Klain spent three years as chief counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Joe Biden. He led the committee staff during its review of the David Souter and Clarence Thomas nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Klain later returned to Capitol Hill as staff director for the Senate Democratic Leadership Committees under Senator Tom Daschle.
Mr. Klain’s experience in presidential politics began with the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, where he was a member of the policy staff and the debate preparation team. His subsequent service in the administration included his work as associate counsel to the president, where he directed judicial selection efforts (and led the selection/confirmation team for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg); his tenure as chief of staff to Attorney General Janet Reno; and culminated with his service for four years as chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore. He held the latter post during both the 1996 re-election campaign and the run up to the 2000 election.
After government service, Mr. Klain became a partner and national practice group chair at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP. During a leave of absence from the firm, Mr. Klain served as director of rapid response for the Gore-Lieberman 2000 campaign, and then, after the election, as general counsel for the Gore-Lieberman Recount Committee. In recognition of his work on the recount, the National Law Journal named him one of its “Lawyers of the Year” for 2000. Later, Mr. Klain served as debate preparation coordinator for the Kerry-Edwards Presidential Campaign in 2004; in this role, he received public credit for Sen. Kerry’s campaign-changing performance in the debates.
Ron Klain is married to Monica Medina, the Whale Conservation Project Director for the Pew Charitable Trusts; they have three children. Mr. Klain, a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, serves on the boards of directors of a number of for-profit and non-profit entities, is a member of the Harvard Law School Board of Visitors, and a featured contributor to New York Times’ “Campaign Stops.”
John Jay Osborn, Jr. was raised in Marin County
California, educated at Harvard College and its law school, clerked on the
Federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals, worked at the law firm of Patterson,
Belknap and Webb in New York City, and taught at the law schools of the
University of Miami, University of California at Berkeley, Cardozo University,
and the University of San Francisco.
He specializes in Contract Law, Wills and Trusts, and the emerging discipline of Law and Literature.
The San Francisco Chronicle has called Osborn, “…heralded teacher…Harvard-trained contracts expert” (2003).
Dean Robert Clark of Harvard Law School said of Osborn, “…acclaimed author, accomplished attorney, inspiring law instructor” (1998).
The New Yorker has called him, “… a writer of wit and style” (1980).
Osborn is the author of the novels, The Paper Chase, The Associates and The Man Who Owned New York, among other books. He has written articles, stories, book reviews and essays that have appeared in the NYU Law Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times among many other publications. He has also written television scripts for 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., Viacom/Showtime and many other entertainment companies. Movies and television series based on his books, and on which he worked, have won numerous awards. His most famous novel, The Paper Chase, written while he was still in law school, was made into a hit movie and iconic TV series starring John Houseman as Professor Kingsfield.
He is currently a distinguished scholar in residence and professor of law at the University of San Francisco School of Law, teaching Contract Law and Wills and Trusts. He resides in San Francisco with his wife of forty years, Dr. Emilie Osborn.
His new book with the working title of Casebook is Osborn’s long-awaited memoir about teaching first year law students.
Alisa Solomon teaches at Columbia University’s
Graduate School of Journalism, where she directs the MA concentration in Arts
and Culture. A long-time theater critic and political and cultural journalist,
she has written, among other places, for the New York Times,
GuardianAmerica.com, WNYC radio, the Forward, American Theater,
nextbook.org, and the Village Voice, where she was on the staff for 21
years. She is author of Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender,
winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, co-editor (with
Tony Kushner) of Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses
to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, and co-editor (with Framji Minwalla) of
The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater.
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 Strossen one of America’s 100 Most Influential Lawyers." Strossen makes approximately 200 public presentations per year, before diverse audiences, and she also comments frequently on legal issues in the national media. Strossen's more than 250 published writings have appeared in many scholarly and general interest publications.
Her book, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights, was 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.
Strossen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College (1972) and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1975).
William Michael Treanor, Dean William Treanor joined the Fordham faculty in 1991 and has taught a range of subjects, including Property, Intellectual Property, Criminal Law, and Legal History. He graduated from Yale College summa cum laude and phi beta kappa and from Yale Law School, where he was an Article and Book Review Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He also holds an A.M. in history from Harvard University. In addition to teaching at Fordham, Dean Treanor has twice taught at the Sorbonne as a Visiting Professor.
Before joining the Fordham faculty, Dean Treanor served as a speechwriter to the United States Secretary of Education, clerk to Judge James L. Oakes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, special assistant to the Chair of the New York State Commission on Government Integrity, special assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia, and as Associate Independent Counsel in the Office of the Iran-Contra Independent Counsel. As Associate Independent Counsel, he did trial and appellate work for the office, and he successfully defended on appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit the conviction of the only Iran-Contra figure to serve jail time, Thomas Clines. From 1998 until 2001, while on leave from Fordham, he was Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, in the United States Department of Justice. The Office of Legal Counsel is responsible for providing legal advice to the Attorney General and the White House. During Dean Treanor's tenure, he focused on issues in criminal law, foreign affairs, international law, intellectual property, and war powers. He also testified before Congress on the applicability of the Privacy Act to the White House and on constitutional issues concerning the government of Puerto Rico.
A leading constitutional historian, Dean Treanor has focused on the original understanding of the Constitution, and his writings include studies examining the original understanding of judicial review and the Constitution's Takings Clause, Intellectual Property Clause, and the War Powers Clause. That work has appeared in the law reviews of the University of Chicago, Cornell, Columbia, Fordham, Georgetown, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and Stanford, among other journals, and he has been cited twice in Supreme Court opinions.
