Edward de Grazia, Lawyer Who Fought Censorship of Books, Is Dead at 86

Edward de Grazia, a lawyer and teacher who in the 1950s and ’60s broadened the scope of what Americans would be allowed to read by helping to defeat government bans on sexually explicit books, died on April 11 in Potomac (MD). He was 86. A fierce civil libertarian who taught for 30 years at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, Mr. de Grazia defined his life’s work as defending “morally defiant artists” against “reactionary politicians and judges.”