| Martin Garbus | |
| Birth Date: | 8 August 1934 |
| Birth Place: | Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Alma Mater: | Hunter College New York University Law School |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Attorney, author, teacher |
| Years Active: | 1963-present |
| Children: | Cassandra Elizabeth "Liz" |
Martin Garbus (born August 8, 1934) is an American attorney. He has argued cases throughout the country involving first amendment, constitutional, criminal, copyright, and intellectual property law. He has appeared before the United States Supreme Court, as well as trial and appellate courts throughout the United States in leading First Amendment cases. His cases have established precedents there and in other courts throughout the country. He has argued and written briefs that have been submitted to the United States Supreme Court; a number of which have resulted in changes in the law on a nationwide basis, including one described by Justice William J. Brennan as "probably the most important due process case in the Twentieth Century". An international observer in foreign elections, he was selected by President Jimmy Carter to observe and report on the elections in Venezuela and Nicaragua. Garbus also participated in drafting several constitutions and foreign laws, including the Czechoslovak constitution. He also has been involved in prisoner exchange negotiations between governments. He is the author of six books and over 30 articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Shouting Fire is a documentary film about his life and career. He received the Fulbright Award for his work on International Human Rights in 2010. In 2014, University College Dublin's Literary and Historical Society honored Garbus with the James Joyce Award for Excellence in Law. The same year Trinity College awarded him for his human rights and free speech work. He has represented dissidents in amongst other places such as China, Russia, Czechoslovakia, India, India, South Africa, and Taiwan.[1]
The Guardian called Garbus "one of the world’s finest trial lawyers" and the "founding partner of one of America’s most prestigious law firms".[2] The New York law Journal called him "one of America's finest criminal lawyers...a legendary criminal lawyer." In 2007, Business Week called him "legendary", "a ferocious lawyer who has received numerous media citations as one of America’s leading trial lawyers" and a "ferocious litigator".[3] Time magazine named him "legendary, one of the best trial lawyers in the country."[4] Fortune magazine called him, "One of the nation's premier First Amendment attorneys", and "legendary".[4] Reuters called him a "famed lawyer"[5] while other media have called him "America's most prominent First Amendment lawyer" with an "extraordinarily diverse practice" and "one of the country's top ten litigators." Super Lawyers Magazine[6] designated him as a Superlawyer. New York magazine and Los Angeles magazine have named him both as one of America's best trial lawyers, and one of America's best intellectual property lawyers.[7]
In 2023, several of Martin Garbus‘ high-profile, controversial cases were featured in “All the Court’s a Stage,” a series of dramatic adaptations by Susan Charlotte, directed by Antony Marsellis and presented by Food for Thought Productions. The series includes stories about Henrietta Wright, Salman Rushdie, Lenny Bruce, Samuel Beckett, Andrei Sakharov, and “Unlucky Gal".
Garbus graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1951. He earned his undergraduate degree at Hunter College in 1955 and his Juris Doctor from New York University Law School.[8] During that time he drove a taxi for two years in New York and worked at The Ford assembly line in Tarrytown, New York. He thereafter attended Columbia University as a master's candidate in economics, at The New School as a master's candidate in English and at New York University Law School as a master's candidate in law. He was admitted in New York, and six other states and federal appeals courts, to the United States Supreme Court Bar in 1963.
After law school and after two years in the United States Army, he clerked for Emile Zola Berman, an internationally known trial lawyer who represented Sirhan Sirhan, and Ephraim London, a Supreme Court advocate and Constitutional lawyer whose firm represented Alger Hiss, and who won every one of the nine cases he argued before the Supreme Court. He was in 1966 co-director of the Columbia University Center on Social Policy and Law while he taught law at Columbia. He was director counsel of the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the ACLU, legal director and associate director of the ACLU, as well as director of the Lawyers Committee to Defend Civil Rights, ran for political office in 1974 and formed his own law firm, Frankfurt Garbus in 1977. He subsequently taught at an adjunct professor at Yale Law School, and has lectured at many law schools in the United States and abroad, including Harvard and Stanford. A Fulbright scholar, he taught in 2005 and 2006 at Tsinghua and Renmin law schools in Beijing, China. At the same time he represented Chinese dissidents, he taught the judges, government officials and drafters of China's new copyright and intellectual property laws. He also participated in "rule of law" seminars in Shanghai and Beijing.[9]
Garbus was involved in the following notable cases:
Other clients include Nelson Mandela, Andrei Sakharov, Václav Havel, Samuel Beckett, Al Pacino, Daniel Ellsberg, Philip Roth, Michael Moore, Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Michael York, Lauren Bacall, Agnes Martin, Pace Gallery, Estate of Mark Rothko, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cincinnati Museum of Fine Art, Robert Redford, Spike Lee, Sally Mann, Allen Ginsberg, Kathy Boudin, Garry Marshall, Marilyn Monroe, Igor Stravinsky, Nora Ephron, Salman Rushdie, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Bertelsmann, Penguin Books, Putnam,[12] Grove Press, The Sundance Film Festival, Alger Hiss, Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Estate of John Cheever, Julie Taymor, Justices in India, Knopf, Leonard Weinglass, Michael Bloomberg, Michael York, Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Philip Roth, Rwanda, Sean Connery, Sonny Mehta, Sophia Loren to clients, Steven Donziger, Susan Sontag, Viking Penguin, and William Kunstler.
In January 2021, Garbus called on the New York State Bar Association and one of the Appellate Divisions of the New York Supreme Court to disbar Rudy Giuliani following the 2021 United States Capitol attack where in a prior "Save America" rally, Giuliani encouraged "trial by combat."[13] [14]
Garbus has participated in lectures and debates before the American Bar Association, the Bar Associations of New York, Washington and Los Angeles on a variety of topics including trial practice, jury selection, copyright and the Supreme Court. Garbus debated former Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr at venues across the country. He served as a commentator for NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, Charlie Rose, CNN, Fox News, Court TV, CCTV in China and the BBC, Time and Newsweek. Garbus has written numerous pieces for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, and Huffington Post.
Garbus' career is set forth in the award-winning HBO documentary .
Garbus spoke with journalist Christiane Amanpour about challenges to free speech, including social media, political vitriol, and the role of the media. He also spoke with Daniel Lelchuk, who runs the Talking Beats podcast, for a discussion of the first amendment—what it really means, and how perhaps, in this social media dominated era, there are implications that go far beyond what previously would have been just a person yelling in the town square that is reported by the local newspaper.
Garbus is also a TED speaker, where he presented on Free Speech and the First Amendment.
Garbus has worked for the governments of the former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Rwanda, and China as a consultant on constitutional, media and communications law. Recently in 2002, the government of China hired Garbus to help address the problems posed by digital piracy. He represented dissidents Václav Havel, Nelson Mandela, and Andrei Sakharov. In 2004, he was appointed advisor to the Chinese team responsible for the creation of China's intellectual property laws.
He has traveled to Russia, former Czechoslovakia, Rwanda, China, Cambodia, Italy, North and South Vietnam, South Korea, Vietnam India, South Africa, Israel, the West Bank, Egypt, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Germany, Spain, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Namibia, and Argentina defending human rights. He taught law in China, Czechoslovakia, and South Africa. He also worked on the writing of constitutions in four countries.
Garbus has two daughters. Cassandra Garbus is an author and teacher who is married to David Moreno. Liz Garbus a director and producer of documentaries and is married to producer Dan Cogan.
Garbus has won several awards for his work:
Book Reviews