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Books
by Ellen Alderman
Alderman is an attorney and co-author, with Caroline Kennedy, of In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action, and The Right to Privacy.
Martin Garbus's bursting life has always defied expectations, and now so does his new book, Tough Talk. Though Garbus is one of the nation's leading First Amendment attorneys, Tough Talk is no primer on constitutional law. Part memoir, part rant on free speech, it is a lively chronicle of Garbus's eventful life and career.
Garbus, 64, escaped a traumatic childhood in the Bronx. His mother died in a fire when he was three and his father's entire family perished in Nazi concentration camps. His own life was destined to revolve around the tiny candy shop where he worked with his father. Instead, Garbus made the unlikely journey from Bronx candy vendor to Greenwich Village bohemian to controversial free speech advocate.
The heart of the story is Garbus's high profile career and it is chock-a-block with big cases, both in terms of their celebrity and the legal issues at stake. Early on, Garbus defended the comedian Lenny Bruce in his notorious obscenity trial; later he fought to lift the fatwa, or death sentence, imposed on author Salman Rushdie, and in between he helped Cesar Chavez organize his United Farm Workers movement in the South, and defended many of those charged in the Indian uprising at Wounded Knee. He argued for the Nazis' right to march in Skokie, Illinois, and for Vaclav Havel's freedom in Czechoslovakia. Garbus even stumbled into the Pentagon Papers case when, as friend of Daniel Ellsberg, he got a first look at the papers then hid them under the eaves of his garage. Many of these cases could support an entire book (and some have) but, in this busy work, Garbus only hits the highlights. The trade-off for the reader who may want more depth is that the book reads like the wind. Garbus and his collaborator Stanley Cohen race through each case's constitutional issues, trial strategies, and crises of conscience, pausing for the telling moments both harrowing (while working with Chavez, a gunman fires shots at Garbus yelling, "Kill that fucking New York Jew!") and humorous (a witness and even the judge in Lenny Bruce's trial begin to recite the "vulgar" words from Bruce's act with unusual volume and enthusiasm).
None of the cases are freighted with an evenhanded discussion of both sides of the constitutional issues involved. In practice, and in this book, Garbus remains a litigator -- a zealous advocate for his client. If he mentions arguments on the other side of an issue, it is usually to knock them down. It turns out that Garbus can talk as tough as any of his controversial clients.
Indeed, a recurring theme is the courage it often takes to do the job. Some of this is familiar turf -- defending Nazis and pornographers will cost you some support. But most interesting is the shellacking Garbus says he endured when he dared to take on his most unpopular client of all -- a plaintiff in a libel suit.
In 1994, New York Daily News columnist Mike McAlary wrote three columns declaring that a young woman's claim of rape in Brooklyn's Prospect Park was a hoax and that she was the one to be arrested. After listening to the woman's story and conducting his own investigation, Garbus concluded that not only was the woman raped, but also that McAlary's hoax story was entirely "a product of his [McAlary's] own imagination." In short, Garbus felt he had a bona fide libel case. More important, he felt the outrageous circumstances warranted "switching sides" and, after a lifetime of defending writers, he filed suit against one of them.
According to Garbus, the reaction from the First Amendment bar was "quick, nasty, and brutish." He was accused of being an apostate, criticized in the press, suspended from an important organization of libel defense attorneys, and felt he had to at least offer his resignation to his partners for jeopardizing their practice. A judge ruled in favor of McAlary, and Garbus's exhausted client decided not to appeal, so the tempest subsided. But the legal and ethical questions raised are so prickly and fundamental that one wishes a journalism or law professor would invite Garbus and his critics to finish duking it out. Can a dedicated First Amendment attorney ever take on the press? Is it possible to win a libel case without weakening First Amendment protection for others in the process? How important is the appearance of solidarity among journalists and their advocates?
Throughout Tough Talk, Garbus argues passionately that free expression, as our most cherished right, must be protected even at great personal cost. Yet he does not say the right is absolute and, under certain circumstances, he is even willing to champion the other side. For that you may call him, as some in the book do, a man of principle and a hero. Or you may call him, as others do as well, a hypocrite and a traitor. Either way, Martin Garbus will defend your right to say it.
