Alan Dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.) is an American lawyer and author known for his writings and media appearances in which he strongly and often controversially defended civil liberties, in particular those regarding freedom of speech. He also garnered attention for his involvement in numerous prominent legal cases.

Dershowitz earned a bachelor’s degree (1959) from Brooklyn College (now part of the City University of New York) and then attended law school at Yale University, where he was editor of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating (1962), he served as a law clerk, first for David Bazelon, who was chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and then for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg. Dershowitz joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1964 and three years later became the youngest law professor to be granted tenure in Harvard University’s history; he retired from teaching in 2013.

In the late 1960s Dershowitz began representing students threatened with expulsion for protesting the Vietnam War, and he soon joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). He started taking on high-profile cases shortly thereafter. When state authorities sought to prevent a Boston theatre from showing the sexually explicit Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), he successfully represented the theatre owner before both a court of appeals and the Supreme Court in 1969. He also successfully appealed the 1976 conviction of actor Harry Reems on federal charges of conspiracy to distribute pornography across state lines because he was one of the performers in the adult film Deep Throat (1972).

In other notable proceedings, Dershowitz won a new trial for wealthy socialite Claus von Bülow, arguing the inadmissibility of evidence used against him when he was convicted in 1982 of the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny von Bülow. In 1991 Dershowitz secured a reduced sentence for disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, and the following year he represented real estate mogul Leona Helmsley in her appeal of her conviction for tax evasion. Perhaps most famously, he was part of the team that successfully defended former football star O.J. Simpson in his 1995 trial for the murders of his former wife and her friend. In 2011 he became part of the legal team for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Dershowitz was a frequent commentator on legal issues and court proceedings on television talk shows and in newspapers and magazines. He also wrote various syndicated opinion columns. His numerous books included The Best Defense (1982), Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case (1986; film 1990), Chutzpah (1991), Reasonable Doubts: The O.J. Simpson Case and the Criminal Justice System (1996), Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis (1998), The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace (2008), and Trumped Up: How Criminalization of Political Differences Endangers Democracy (2017). The latter work was part of Dershowitz’s frequent public inveighing against the investigation led by Robert Mueller into whether there had been collusion between Russia and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. In 2020 Dershowitz joined Trump’s defense team for the president’s impeachment trial in the Senate; Trump faced charges that arose from his dealings with Ukraine. During the trial, Dershowitz drew controversy over statements that seemed to give the president unprecedented power. Notably, he stated that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” Trump was acquitted in February 2020.