Dershowitz Alan M - Taking the stand: my life in the law

ALSO BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ

The Trials of Zion

The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza

The Case Against Israels Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace

Is There a Right to Remain Silent? Coercive Interrogation and the Fifth Amendment after 9/11

Finding Jefferson: A Lost Letter, a Remarkable Discovery, and the First Amendment in an Age of Terrorism

Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking Our Declaration of Independence

Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways

What Israel Means to Me: By 80 Prominent Writers, Performers, Scholars, Politicians, and Journalists

Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights

America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation

The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved

The Case for Israel

America Declares Independence

Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge

Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age

Letters to a Young Lawyer

Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000

Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice That Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law

Just Revenge

Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis

The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century

Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case

The Abuse Excuse: And Other Cop-Outs, Sob Stories, and Evasions of Responsibility

The Advocates Devil

Contrary to Popular Opinion

Chutzpah

Taking Liberties: A Decade of Hard Cases, Bad Laws, and Bum Raps

Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Blow Case

The Best Defense

Criminal Law: Theory and Process (with Joseph Goldstein and Richard Schwartz)

Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Law (with Joseph Goldstein and Jay Katz)

Copyright 2013 by Alan Dershowitz

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dershowitz, Alan M.
Taking the stand : an autobiography / by Alan Dershowitz.First edition.
pages cm.
1. Dershowitz, Alan M. 2. LawyersUnited StatesBiography. 3. Jewish lawyersUnited StatesBiography. 4. Law teachersUnited StatesBiography. 5. Freedom of speechUnited StatesCases. 6. Capital punishmentUnited StatesCases. I. Title.
KF373.D46A3 2013
340.092dc23
[B] 2013022762

ISBN 978-0-307-71927-0
eISBN: 978-0-307-71929-4

Jacket design by Eric White
Jacket photography: Michael Weschler

v3.1

This book is lovingly dedicated to my family
past, present, and future.

Ldor vdor.

Introduction
A Life of Continuous Change

Conclusion
Closing Argument

An autobiographer is like a defendant who takes the stand. We all have the right to remain silent, in life and in law. But if one elects to bear witness, he must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, subject only to limited privileges, such as between a lawyer and a client, or a husband and a wife.

What Tocqueville observed two centuries agothat in our country, great issues find their way into courtsis even truer today. Accordingly, my autobiography will be a history of the last half century as seen through the eyes of a lawyer privileged to have participated in some of the most intriguing and important cases and controversies of our era. It is also an account of one mans intellectual and ideological development during a dramatic period of world, American, and Jewish history, enriched with anecdotes and behind-the-scenes stories from my life and the lives of those I have encountered.

The law has changed considerably over the past half century. I have not only observed and written about these changes, I have helped to bring some about through litigation, writing, and teaching. This book presents an account of these changes and of my participation in the cases that precipitated them. My commitment to full disclosure requires that I not hide behind the distorting shield of feigned humilitycalculated to preempt criticismthat denies the reader an accurate picture of the impact the author has had on events.lowly sexton (shammes), seeing the rabbi and the cantor engaging in such self-flagellation, also gets down on his knees and screams, I too am nothing. The rabbi looks contemptuously at the sexton and whispers to the cantor, Look whos claiming to be nothing.) Nor will I rewrite my past to conform to present notions of political correctness. Instead, I will try to offer an honest assessment of the roles I have playedfor better or worsein legal developments.