Word: dershowitz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Alone, it's not an entirely satisfying explanation. You still wonder why it always seems to be Dershowitz who had to take it upon himself to keep the government honest by freeing criminals. He has, after all, challenged the government as a lawyer of last resort in many controversial cases--ranging from defending porn star Hary Reems to representing nursing home mogul Bernard Bergman to backing CIA agent-turned-whistleblower Frank Snepp to aiding the JDL conspirator. In some cases, his clever defenses advanced civil liberties; in others, they freed people who should be behind bars...
...Best Defense paints a disturbingly accurate picture of elite corruption in the criminal justice system. Public defense lawyers. Dershowitz observes are often out to better statistics and to plea-bargain away their clients' cases for illusory victories. Others don't care at all about their clients, just their fees. Judges, many of whom are former prosecutors, often side with the state. And those lawyers skilled enough to offset those systemic biases are often too concerned about their reputations to defend a crook who's been villified by the press...
...comes down to the man from Harvard Law, and mavericks like him. To his credit, Dershowitz doesn't say he's gutsier than most of his legal colleagues in taking on civil liberties cases or in defending social pariahs. His explanation is that, as a Cambridge academic with an independent income, he can lay his professional reputation on the line more readily than full-time practitioners. And Alan Dershowitz takes the lawyer-client relationship too seriously not to argue aggressively those appeals he does accept. You don't see many of today's average blow-dried attorneys taking cases...
...negotiate the release of imprisoned dissidents--a venture that paid off dramatically years later--is moving, indeed. His description of the predicament of two teenage brothers on death row for murders their father committed with them helplessly in tow reads like a thriller. (It's also one case Dershowitz has yet to win.) He does spend a little too much time harking back to his Brooklyn roots in Boro Park, and his puns inspire cringes. But on the whole, it's surprisingly crisp, and modest...
...public, Dershowitz's histrionics have probably eclipsed his effective advocacy on behalf of civil liberties and ostracized defendants. That's too bad; he'd sway more minds if more people took him seriously and didn't just think of him as that angry young professor with the long hair and loud voice. But even in the procedure-heavy field of law, with its emphasis on form, the bottom line is that substance still matters more than style. The legal profession probably would be better off if other lawyers began to risk their reputations by joining Dershowitz at "the constitutional barricades...