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About the Author
William Bennett Turner
For the past quarter century, William Bennett Turner has taught The First Amendment and the Press at the University of California at Berkeley. He has also taught First Amendment courses 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. 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.
To learn more about William B. Turner, visit his website.
