Figures of Speech First Amendment Heroes and Villains

For the last 25 years, William Bennett Turner has taught a course on the First Amendment at UC Berkeley. His book,Figures of Speech, describes the colorful characters who have played roles in important First Amendment controversies. Choosing figures and cases from his own personal experience, Turner illustrates broad First Amendment principles and describes how wers"ve arrived at our contemporary understanding of the First Amendmentrs"s meaning.

For the past 29 years, William Bennett Turner has taught course on freedom of speech and the press at the University of California at Berkeley. He has also taught First Amendment courses at OLLI@Berkeley and at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco.

Mr. Turner practiced law for 45 years. As a San Francisco lawyer, he specialized in unusual litigation, including constitutional law. He argued three cases before the United States Supreme Court (including two First Amendment cases) and more than 40 cases in lower appellate courts, and he served as lead counsel in many notable state and federal trials.

He graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1963 and, after a Fulbright fellowship in comparative law, he spent three years with a New York law firm. This was followed by nearly ten years with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund doing civil rights law. He returned to teach at Harvard in 1977. He founded his own law firm in San Francisco in 1978 and served as its senior partner until 1992. He was of counsel to the firm of Rogers Joseph O'Donnell from 1992 to 2008.

Mr. Turner has published more than 40 articles in various magazines, newspapers and law reviews. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Politico, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, Harvard Magazine, The Threepenny Review and many other publications. He also served as Legal Affairs Correspondent for KQED television, winning numerous awards for news and documentaries on legal subjects. He was Legal Consultant to the PBS ""We The People"" series on the Bicentennial of the Constitution. He is the author of Figures of Speech: First Amendment Heroes and Villains.