Alan Dershowitz

Alan Morton Dershowitz was born on September 1, 1938, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Boro Park.[1] He received twelve years of Orthodox day-school education, attending Yeshiva University High School before going on to undergraduate study.[2] A school principal at Yeshiva reportedly advised the talkative young Dershowitz to pursue a career "where you use your mouth, not your brains."[1]

Dershowitz graduated magna cum laude from Brooklyn College and then attended Yale Law School, where he became an editor of the Yale Law Journal and finished at the top of his class in 1962.[1] His 2013 memoir was described as tracing his path from a C-minus student at Yeshiva High School to the youngest full professor in Harvard Law School's history.[3]

After graduating from Yale, Dershowitz clerked for Chief Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals and then for Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg.[1] He joined Harvard Law School as an associate professor in 1964 and, at age 28, became the institution's youngest tenured professor. In 1993 he was named the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law; his principal fields included criminal law and appellate litigation.[1]

Dershowitz retired from teaching at Harvard Law School in 2013 after a fifty-year career.[4] At the time, he was described as an expert in criminal and constitutional law and said that 60 percent of his legal work was pro bono.[4] He has also been described as "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer" and "the best-known criminal lawyer in the world," although these are attributed characterizations rather than objective rankings.[5] By 2005, he had authored twenty-two works of fiction and nonfiction; one became a number-one bestseller, and another was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.[6]

During his decades at Harvard, Dershowitz was a sought-after speaker on American Jewish public life. In October 2009 he was scheduled to address students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York on challenges facing the next generation of American Jewish leaders.[7] He also spoke at Jewish Federation meetings and universities across the United States and was personally acquainted with prominent U.S. policymakers, including President Clinton.[2]

Dershowitz built his reputation as a lawyer willing to represent unpopular or notorious defendants while advocating for First Amendment freedoms, civil and human rights, and Jewish causes.[1] His documented clients included Harry Reems, Claus von Bulow, Jonathan Pollard, Mike Tyson, Bill Clinton, Julian Assange, Mia Farrow, Jeffrey MacDonald, Patty Hearst, and Leona Helmsley, among others.[1][3]

His most publicly visible courtroom role came in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Dershowitz joined Simpson's defense team, which secured Simpson's acquittal on murder charges in October 1995.[1] He subsequently wrote Reasonable Doubts, an account of the case. His other books included Reversal of Fortune, an account of the Claus von Bulow appeal later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film; Chutzpah, which argued that American Jews should reject second-class citizenship and show greater pride in their identity; and Shouting Fire, a collection on civil liberties.[1]

Dershowitz's first U.S. Supreme Court argument concerned the film I Am Curious (Yellow), whose screening had been banned in Boston.[1] He argued that the First Amendment protected consenting adults' right to view the film privately. After the Supreme Court remanded the case, the prosecution was dismissed and the ban was lifted.[1]

His 2013 memoir, Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law, was published by Crown Publishers. It addressed censorship and the limits of First Amendment law, tensions between individual freedom and national security, civil rights, capital punishment, the abortion-rights debate after Roe v. Wade, Holocaust denial, academic freedom, defamation and privacy, speech supporting terrorist groups, and human-rights controversies.[3]

Dershowitz's engagement with Jewish causes extended beyond American courtrooms. In 1974 he traveled to the Soviet Union as part of a U.S. group that submitted appeals on behalf of fourteen Soviet Jews and two non-Jews who had been imprisoned after being denied emigration visas.[1] The effort helped secure the early release of several prisoners, who subsequently immigrated to Israel. Dershowitz also attempted, unsuccessfully, to represent Soviet dissident Anatoly Scharansky, but Soviet authorities blocked the representation.[1]

His Soviet Jewry advocacy continued in the late 1970s. In a 1978 initiative involving American and Soviet district attorneys, Israeli Liaison Bureau representative Yitzhak Rager raised funds and hired Dershowitz to co-head a legal team focused on the alleged persecution of Jewish prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union.[8] The initiative also involved attorneys Eugene Gold and Telford Taylor; Taylor agreed to appeal certain cases on the condition that Israeli government representatives not be directly involved.[8]

Dershowitz has been a prominent advocate for Israel in academic, legal, and political forums and has written extensively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[9]

The Case for Israel, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2003, became a New York Times bestseller and is structured around thirty-two questions addressing accusations leveled at Israel.[10][6] Those questions include whether Israel is a racist state, whether it created the Arab refugee problem, whether it started the Six-Day War, and whether settlement policy constitutes a major barrier to peace.[10] The book argues that Israel is judged by a double standard and distinguishes ordinary criticism of Israeli policy from singling out Israel for unique sanctions, which it labels antisemitism.[10] A 2005 essay called the book an "advocacy bible" while noting its less-than-enthusiastic reception among many Jewish-studies faculty.[11]

Dershowitz has said that he initially wanted to write The Case for Peace but instead wrote The Case for Israel because, in his view, arguments against Israel were being prominently and uncritically presented on American university campuses and were based on ignorance.[12] He described the book as an effort to present a liberal, fact-based case for Israel. He also argued that criticism of Israeli policies is compatible with Zionism while contending that double standards and extreme criticism can blur the line between policy disagreement and antisemitism.[12]

His 2019 book Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client presented his decades of Israel advocacy as a personal and intellectual journey.[13] His 2008 book The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace addressed Jimmy Carter and others in the context of the controversy following Carter's 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.[9][14]

Dershowitz has been a forceful critic of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. In the foreword to the September 2019 Israeli government publication Behind the Mask: The Antisemitic Nature of BDS Exposed, he argued that BDS violated human-rights principles, harmed prospects for a peaceful Middle East resolution, and promoted antisemitism by singling out Israel.[15] He characterized BDS as directed against Israel's existence rather than merely against Israeli policies and argued that prohibiting discrimination against Israelis, Zionists, and Jews does not infringe freedom of speech.[15] He also published an essay titled Ten Reasons Why the BDS Movement Is Immoral and Hinders Peace.[16]

In 2007, Dershowitz drafted a declaration opposing a proposed British academic boycott of Israel; more than ten thousand academics signed it, including thirty-two Nobel Prize winners.[17] He and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg also published a joint letter declaring that they considered themselves Israeli academics for purposes of academic boycotts and would decline to participate in activities from which Israeli academics were excluded.[18] Dershowitz later proposed that Israel offer honorary citizenship to musicians and academics who might be targeted by BDS, describing it as an act of solidarity short of full aliyah.[18]

At the 2018 UN Watch Gala Dinner in Geneva, where he received the organization's Lifetime Achievement Award, Dershowitz urged supporters to keep Israel a bipartisan issue in the United States and called on students to challenge what he regarded as anti-Israel narratives on college campuses.[19] He said UN Watch supplied transparency that the United Nations itself did not provide and recounted, as his own account, that he had worked with Justice Arthur Goldberg on language in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 concerning refugees.[19]

Dershowitz has described himself as a pro-Israel liberal Democrat and a secular Jew who is a committed Zionist and believes passionately in the Jewish state.[9][2] He has said that he assisted Palestinian students seeking to include the Palestinian flag in a Harvard campus display, favors a two-state solution, and opposes the occupation.[9][6] His opposition to BDS has not prevented him from criticizing particular Israeli policies: during the 2018 Lara Alqasem affair, he said that "Israel should have never detained" her.[20]

Dershowitz has expressed concern about what he views as rising antisemitic speech on American college campuses and has urged academics to condemn rhetoric used to justify hatred of Jews.[12] In a 2018 speech, he also recalled campaigning as a teenager against a proposed universal calendar that he believed could interfere with Shabbat and Jewish holidays.[19]

In January 2020, Dershowitz joined Donald Trump's Senate impeachment defense team as special counsel on constitutional issues.[21] He said he would not address the facts of the case or the defense strategy but would argue that abuse of power and obstruction of Congress were not valid bases for impeachment unless they rose to conduct akin to treason or bribery.[21]

The role drew scrutiny because a 1998 video showed Dershowitz arguing during the Clinton impeachment debate that an impeachable offense did not need to be a technical crime.[21] Dershowitz acknowledged the earlier statement but said subsequent research had refined rather than abandoned his position, a distinction disputed by his critics.[21]

Alongside his legal and Israel-advocacy writing, Dershowitz has addressed Jewish identity, continuity, and survival in America. His 1991 book Chutzpah argued that American Jews should reject second-class status and show greater pride in their identity and heritage.[1] His 1997 book The Vanishing American Jew addressed Jewish survival, education, peoplehood, intermarriage, religion, and Israel.[2]

Dershowitz has described himself as a secular Jew and said that if he had several lives to live, one of them would be as an Israeli.[2] He has described Judaism as argumentative and as "a process for arriving at changing truths for changing times." His proposed characteristics for a future Jewish identity included commitments to education, social and political causes, the arts, charitable giving, compassion, family and community ties, creativity, adaptability, and achievement in fields such as law and academia.[2]

He has also expressed concern about rising antisemitic rhetoric in American academic settings.[12] Dershowitz argues that legitimate criticism of Israeli policy can cross into antisemitism when Israel is singled out for treatment not applied to other countries.[10][12]

Dershowitz received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979, the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award from the Anti-Defamation League in 1983, and a Freedom of Speech Award from the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts in 1996.[1] Honorary degrees or awards were conferred by Yeshiva University, Syracuse University, Hebrew Union College, the University of Haifa, Monmouth College, Fitchburg College, and Brooklyn College.[1]

In 2018 he received the UN Watch Lifetime Achievement Award at its gala dinner in Geneva.[19] In 2017, the World Jewish Congress hosted a webinar with him about making the case for Israel, describing him as active in defending civil liberties and human rights and as the author of numerous books on politics and law.[22] By 2005, more than one million copies of his books had been sold worldwide.[6]

Dershowitz's public career has combined legal scholarship, criminal defense, civil-liberties litigation, Jewish advocacy, and support for Israel. At Harvard he became the law school's youngest tenured professor and later held the Felix Frankfurter chair; outside academia he represented controversial clients while defending the principle of vigorous legal representation.[1][23]

His Israel advocacy included bestselling books, campus appearances, opposition to academic boycotts, and criticism of the BDS movement.[10][15] He described himself as a committed Zionist while also supporting a two-state solution, opposing the occupation, and criticizing some Israeli government decisions.[20][2]

His work on Soviet Jewry, First Amendment litigation, impeachment law, and Jewish identity broadened his public role beyond criminal defense. Profiles have called him "Israel's single most visible defender" and "the nation's most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer," characterizations that reflect both his prominence and his combative public style rather than objective rankings.[5]

Several aspects of Dershowitz's career have generated significant public and legal controversy.

Jeffrey Epstein Representation and Sexual-Abuse Allegations

Dershowitz represented Jeffrey Epstein in connection with the 2008 plea agreement that gave Epstein thirteen months in a private county-jail wing, permitted him to leave for work six days a week, and provided immunity from federal prosecution for Epstein and his associates.[23] A judge later ruled that the agreement was illegal because Epstein's victims had not been notified before it was approved.[23] Dershowitz said he would represent Epstein again under the same circumstances: "I have no misgivings and I will continue to represent controversial people. That's what I do. If I'm in a case, my job is to get the best possible result."[23]

Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Sarah Ransome separately alleged that Dershowitz had sexually abused them in connection with Epstein.[23] Dershowitz categorically denied the allegations, said he had never met the accusers, and stated that he possessed evidence that Giuffre was lying.[23] A later settlement between Dershowitz and attorneys Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell stated that Edwards and Cassell acknowledged it was a mistake to file sexual-misconduct accusations against Dershowitz and that the accusations were withdrawn from public filings.[24] The same record states that the agreement concerned public claims and attorney conduct, not a determination of whether the alleged misconduct occurred.[24]

Impeachment Arguments

Dershowitz's argument during the 2020 Trump impeachment trial—that abuse of power and obstruction of Congress were insufficient grounds for impeachment unless equivalent to treason or bribery—was disputed and contrasted with statements he made during the Clinton impeachment era.[21] Dershowitz maintained that his later research had refined rather than reversed his earlier position.[21]

The Goldstone Report and Norman Finkelstein

Dershowitz strongly attacked South African judge Richard Goldstone following a United Nations panel report on Israel's conduct during the Gaza war, publishing a forty-nine-page rebuttal criticizing its methodology, analysis, and findings.[25] The dispute ended a long friendship between the two men, and Shulamit Aloni publicly condemned Dershowitz's characterization of Goldstone.[25]

Dershowitz also circulated a dossier describing what he called academic sins, lies, misquotations, and distortions by political scientist Norman Finkelstein during Finkelstein's unsuccessful bid for tenure at DePaul University.[26] DePaul's president stated that opponents of tenure viewed Finkelstein's personal attacks as unprofessional while denying that Dershowitz's campaign affected the tenure decision or infringed academic freedom.[26]

BDS and Israel Advocacy

Dershowitz's characterization of BDS as antisemitic and fundamentally directed against Israel's existence rather than specific policies is a contested political claim.[15][16] His interpretation of when criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism has also been debated, and a 2005 study noted that The Case for Israel received a less-than-enthusiastic reception among Jewish-studies faculty.[11]

Two claims Dershowitz has made about his biography—that he contributed to the refugee language of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited him to become Israel's UN ambassador—are presented in the available source as his own accounts and were not independently verified in the source material reviewed for this article.[19]