Alan Dershowitz
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitzis an American lawyer, jurist, and author. He is a prominent scholar on United States constitutional law and criminal law, and a leading defender of civil liberties. He spent most of his career at Harvard Law School where in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there from 1993 until his retirement in December 2013...
ProfessionLawyer
Date of Birth1 September 1938
CityNew York City, NY
law
We wouldn't even know where to look to find the law because there is no law.
thinking law presumption-of-innocence
I don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals.
war law target
It's never acceptable to target civilians. It violates the Geneva Accords, it violates the international law of war and it violates all principles of morality.
winning law justice
I never place limits on the potential success of my students. If they're going into acting, they're going to win the Oscar... If they're going into law, they're going to be chief justice.
moving law intellectual
I've written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy.
law agnostic ultimate-truth
The law is agnostic about truth.
thinking law people
I think we're seeing privacy diminish, not by laws... but by young people who don't seem to value their privacy.
lawyer shut-up cases
A good lawyer knows how to shut up when he's won his case.
simple law people
For most people, the question why be good - as distinguished from merely law abiding - is a simple one. Because God commands it, because the Bible requires it, because good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell.
attitude law important
Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.
dream law shapes
It's every lawyer's dream to help shape the law, not just react to it.
rights law long
To ask about the 'source' of rights or morals assumes an erreous conclusion. To ask about the source of morals is to assume that such a source exists. As if it existed outside of human constructed systems. The 'source' is the human ability to learn from experience and to entrench rights in our laws and in our consciousness. Our rights come from our long history of wrongs.
real law doubt
I have no doubt that if an actual ticking bomb situation were to arise, our law enforcement authorities would torture. The real debate is whether such torture should take place outside of our legal system or within it. The answer to this seems clear: If we are to have torture, it should be authorized by the law.
sports government law
In representing criminal defendants especially guilty ones it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct. In law, as in sports, the best defense is often a good offense. The courtroom oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is applicable only to witnesses... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth.