Following law school, Amsterdam was
law clerk to Justice
Felix Frankfurter. Working with the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Amsterdam argued and won
Furman v. Georgia in 1972, in which the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled on the requirement for a degree of consistency in the application of the
death penalty. He sits on the board of directors of the
Death Penalty Information Center. Amsterdam wrote
Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, an influential paper which has been called
"one of the best, if not the best, law review article[s] written on the
Fourth Amendment." He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. == See also ==