Melville Bernard Nimmer (1923-1985) was an American lawyer and law professor, renowned as an expert in freedom of speech and United States copyright law.[1]
Nimmer graduated from UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the California State Bar in January 1951[2]. He was professor at the UCLA School of Law from 1962. One year later, he published the two-volume treatise that would become the definitive text on copyright law, Nimmer on Copyright[3]. In 1984, he published a one-volume treatise on freedom of speech, titled appropriately Nimmer on Freedom of Speech: Treatise on Theory of First Amendment.
As a lawyer, he was best known as the winning attorney in the 1971 case Cohen v. California.[4] In Cohen, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a 5-4 vote in an opinion written by Justice Harlan, held that a state cannot criminalize speech absent a "particularized and compelling reason." The Court struck down the conviction of a 19-year-old man who had walked into the Los Angeles courthouse with a shirt reading "Fuck the Draft." Cohen became one of the leading cases interpreting the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protection of freedom of speech.
   | First Amendment Library entry for ''Cohen v. California'' - First Amendment Library - Case |
| | Cohen v. California decision, at BC - Cohen v. California (1971) |
| | Attorney Search - State Bar of CA :: Attorney Search |
| | Georgetown Law Library: Copyright Law Research Guide - Georgetown Law Library: Copyright Law Research Guide |
| | Nimmer.net - Nimmer Pictures Inc - Michael Jackson: The Untold Story of Neverland documentary |
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