Alan Dershowitz

Professor, Author

1938 –

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Who is Alan Dershowitz?

Alan Morton Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, and political commentator. He is a prominent scholar on United States constitutional law and criminal law. He has 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 has held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there since 1993. Dershowitz retired from teaching at Harvard Law in December 2013.

Dershowitz is known for his involvement in several high-profile legal cases and as a commentator on the Arab–Israeli conflict. As a criminal appellate lawyer, he has won 13 of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases he has handled, and has represented a series of celebrity clients, including Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, and Jim Bakker. His most notable cases include his role in 1984 in overturning the conviction of Claus von Bülow for the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny, and as the appellate adviser for the defense in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995.

A political liberal, he is the author of a number of books about politics and law, including Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case, the basis of the 1990 film; Chutzpah; Reasonable Doubts: The Criminal Justice System and the O.J. Simpson Case; the best-selling The Case for Israel; Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights and The Case for Peace.

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Born
Sep 1, 1938
Williamsburg
Also known as
  • Alan Morton Dershowitz
  • Alan M. Dershowitz
  • Prof. Alan Dershowitz
Parents
Spouses
Children
Religion
  • Judaism
  • Agnosticism
Ethnicity
  • Jewish people
Nationality
  • United States of America
Profession
Education
  • Yale Law School
  • Brooklyn College
  • Harvard Law School
  • Yale University
Lived in
  • Brooklyn

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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