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
believe thinking innocent-person
I think most defense attorneys honestly believe the principle that says, 'Better 10 guilty go free than even one possibly innocent person be convicted.
learning-experience
I learn from experience.
atheist people church
Yes, believers and non-believers and skeptics can all live together and get along. But there cannot be an imperialistic imposition of religion by the state or by the church. All people must be equal--believers, skeptics, disbelievers, atheists, and those who chose religion. Unless we are all deemed equal, and unless the morality of disbelief is deemed the equivalent of the morality of belief, we will simply be tolerated, and that is not the American way.
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.
gun people majority
The vast majority of gun owners don't kill, but people who do kill, tend to kill with guns, and often with illegal guns.
thinking political connections
I've thought hard about my psychological connections and I think I've managed to separate out the psychological from the legal, moral, and political.
law agnostic ultimate-truth
The law is agnostic about truth.
justice criminals trials
A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty.
ideas people desert
Ideas don't desert you; ideas aren't treasonous to you, but people can be.
trying democracy truth-is
Most liberal democracies don't try to figure out what the truth is.
doubt criminals trials
Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
borders internet national-borders
The Internet knows no national borders.
believe academic-freedom professors
I don't believe in firing professors. They have academic freedom.
jobs justice defense
The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth.