"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"
About this Quote
A top First Amendment lawyer confessing he wrote for non-lawyers is less humility than a quiet rebuke: the law has made itself unreadable on purpose. Abrams is describing an intent that sounds almost radical in his profession - to treat the public as the real audience, not just judges, clerks, and opposing counsel. The line is crafted to flatter ("educated public") while drawing a boundary: this isn’t aimed at everyone, but at citizens who take civic disputes seriously and shouldn’t need a decoder ring to participate.
The subtext is reputational and strategic. Abrams has spent a career arguing that speech disputes are ultimately about democratic legitimacy, not merely technical doctrine. So clarity becomes a form of advocacy: if the lay reader can follow the reasoning, the argument gains moral force, not just legal plausibility. He’s also implicitly acknowledging how legal writing often functions as gatekeeping - obscurity as insulation, jargon as authority. By saying he "really did try", Abrams hints at resistance: institutional habits, professional incentives, maybe even colleagues who confuse complexity with rigor.
Context matters because Abrams occupies a rare perch: he litigated for newspapers, universities, and high-profile speakers, where public opinion shadows every courtroom move. In that world, persuading the broader culture is part of the job. The sentence reads like a small democratic promise: that constitutional arguments should be legible to the people whose rights are being negotiated, not only to the specialists paid to translate them.
The subtext is reputational and strategic. Abrams has spent a career arguing that speech disputes are ultimately about democratic legitimacy, not merely technical doctrine. So clarity becomes a form of advocacy: if the lay reader can follow the reasoning, the argument gains moral force, not just legal plausibility. He’s also implicitly acknowledging how legal writing often functions as gatekeeping - obscurity as insulation, jargon as authority. By saying he "really did try", Abrams hints at resistance: institutional habits, professional incentives, maybe even colleagues who confuse complexity with rigor.
Context matters because Abrams occupies a rare perch: he litigated for newspapers, universities, and high-profile speakers, where public opinion shadows every courtroom move. In that world, persuading the broader culture is part of the job. The sentence reads like a small democratic promise: that constitutional arguments should be legible to the people whose rights are being negotiated, not only to the specialists paid to translate them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|
More Quotes by Floyd
Add to List
