Art & Creativity Quote by Floyd Abrams

Abrams is doing what the best First Amendment lawyers always do: conceding the mood without conceding the premise. “We have some serious problems now” nods to the familiar contemporary anxiety about speech and democratic decay, but it’s the pivot that matters. He’s not offering comfort; he’s making an institutional argument dressed as realism. The phrase “if you look back” is courtroom language in civilian clothes, an invitation to treat panic as bad evidence and history as the controlling precedent.

The quiet hero of the quote is “those cases.” Abrams is pointing to the long arc of Supreme Court decisions that expanded protections for press freedom and controversial speech. He’s telling you that today’s messy, often ugly public square is partly the price of those wins - and that the alternative would have been worse: a weaker legal culture, fewer constraints on government retaliation, more room for censorship dressed up as public order. “Had not come down” is a lawyer’s passive voice with a purpose; it reminds us that rights aren’t granted by vibes or good leadership but by hard, contested rulings that become infrastructure.

The subtext is also a warning to the reform-minded: be careful what you wish for when you call for new limits in the name of civility or safety. Abrams frames litigation not as abstract doctrine but as a time-tested counterweight to political swings. His intent is to re-center the debate on durability - not whether speech is currently pleasant, but whether the legal scaffolding can outlast the next round of “serious problems.”