Alan Dershowitz - The Price of Principle: Why Integrity Is Worth the Consequences

Copyright 2022 by Alan Dershowitz

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-5107-7328-8

eBook: 978-1-5107-7329-5

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Printed in the United States of America

Praise for Alan Dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz, a principled man who takes the barbs better than anybody because he sticks to his principles and he doesnt really care whether you like him, and thats why he has fights with Larry David.

Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show

Perhaps the greatest lawyer in the world a national treasure.

Gregg Kelly, TV host of Greg Kelly Reports

A living profile in courage.

Steve Forbes

The fearless, peerless Alan Dershowitz.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain

Alan Dershowitz speaks with great passion and personal courage.

Elie Wiesel

An intellectual heavyweight.

The Economist

Astonishingly brilliant courtroom presence [and] a subtle and compelling theorist of civil liberties.

Henry Louis Gates

Loud, provocative, brilliant, and principled .

Politico

In fifty years of working with Alan Dershowitz, I have never met a more principled or honest advocate for truth.

Irwin Cotler, former Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Canada

Also by Alan Dershowitz
( Price of Principle is his 50 th book)

The Case for Vaccine Mandates

The Case for Color-Blind Equality in an Age of Identity Politics

The Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities

Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process

The Case for Liberalism in an Age of Extremism: or, Why I Left the Left But Cant Join the Right

Confirming JusticeOr Injustice?: A Guide to Judging RGBs Successor

Defending the Constitution

Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo

Defending Israel: The Story of My Relationship with My Most Challenging Client

The Case Against Impeaching Trump

The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott Is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace

Trumped Up: How Criminalization of Political Differences Endangers Democracy

Electile Dysfunction: A Guide for Unaroused Voters

The Case Against the Iran Deal

Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israels Just War Against Hamas

Abraham: The Worlds First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer

Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law

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 the Age of Terrorism

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

Pre-emption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways

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, 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

Fair and Certain Punishment: Report of the 20 th Century Fund Task Force on Criminal Sentencing

Courts of Terror: Soviet Criminal Justice and Jewish Emigration (coauthored with Telford Taylor)

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

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

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

My wife, family, and friends have helped me live a life of principle and write about it.

Thanks to my assistant Maura Kelly, my editor Hector Carosso, my publisher Tony Lyons, and my friends Aaron Voloj, Alan Rothfeld, Marshall Sonenshine, and Harvey Silverglate for their constructive criticism.

And my appreciation to my friendsespecially those who disagree with mewho have not abandoned me over our principled disagreements.

D EDICATION

At age eighty-three, the most important people in my lifeaside from family and friendsare my doctors, who keep me able to write. This book is dedicated to them and to all doctors who serve humankind without sufficient appreciation.

Contents

Preface

T his is my 50th book.

I love writing. I write every day. I try to write 1,5002,000 words a day (just as I try to walk five miles a day with my wife, and drink a glass of good wine with her, if I achieve my goals).

I have written about a wide array of subjects from criminal and constitutional law (my specialties) to the Bible, American history, Israel, moral philosophy, autobiography, politics, medicine, terrorism, sports, and delicatessen. I have written three novels and approximately 1,000 articleslaw review scholarship, op-eds, magazine articles, and book reviews. I have been told that I have published more not necessarily betterwords than any Harvard professor in history. (I dont recall whether that was meant as a compliment.)

Descartes wrote I think, therefore I am. For me, it is I write, therefore I am. Recently I underwent surgery for the removal of my gallbladder that required general anesthesia. My doctor cautioned me that at age 83, the anesthesia might affect my cognitive abilities for a period of time. So as soon as I regained consciousness, I decided to write an op-ed to see whether my cognition was impaired. While of this book. So you can judge whether I was compos mentis when I wrote it.