Alan Dershowitz Quotes

Dershowitz does not engage the debate in this country about Israel on the factual, legal, moral, and humanitarian merits because he knows that his client is "guilty" of violating international law in its occupation of the Palestinian territories

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.

I believe that experience demonstrates that a democratic society that recognizes and enforces these basic rights—uncensored expression, freedom of conscience, due process, democracy, and equal protection of the laws—is preferable to a society that does not. That is my case for rights. That is why I have a strong preference for rights.

You know, being black doesn’t give you a license to call people racist any more than being Jewish gives you license to call people anti-Semitic.

As one civil-liberties lawyer, who is concerned about the sometimes vigilante attitude toward accused rapists, puts it: "Some people regard rape as so heinous an offense that they would not even regard innocence as a defense."

Students throughout the totalitarian world risk life and limb for freedom of expression, many American college students are demanding that big brother restrict their freedom of speech on campus. This demand for enhanced censorship is not emanating only from the usual corner – the know-nothing fundamentalist right – it is coming from the radical, and increasingly not-so-radical left as well.

Dershowitz is not only a remarkable liar and slanderer, but also an extreme opponent of elementary civil rights.

The judge also has a truth he wants to hide: He often hasn't been completely candid in describing the facts or the law.

But ‘group rights’ is an oxymoron. Groups, especially those with increasing political power, have interests and agendas, but they may not implement them by ignoring the rights of individuals, especially those within these groups who are disempowered and despised.

The Times reports that even some Jewish organizations are prepared to give Ukraine a pass on its toleration of neo-Nazis, because they don't want to be perceived as supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin's narrative about Ukraine being a Nazi state. Ukraine is not a Nazi state; it is a state that elected a Jew as president, while tolerating Nazism in its military. Those who refuse to condemn such intolerable toleration only encourage it by their mistaken silence. Calling out military groups that would like to turn Ukraine into a Nazi state, does not further the Russian narrative. It only tells a painful truth about the present, the past, and the likely future.

A group called the Azov Brigade fought bravely to defend eastern Ukraine, holding out in Mariupol's Azovstal Steel Plant for weeks after others had given up hope. Unfortunately, the same Azov Brigade has proudly boasted of its neo-Nazi ideology and wore their own version of the swastika until it was no longer convenient for them to do so.

The Meares-Kahan essay begins with a historical error. The rights about which they speak did not grow exclusively out of an effort to remedy institutionalized racism. Rights do have histories, and the right of every American to be secure against unlawful police intrusion grew out of a long history of governmental abuse against disempowered people of all backgrounds.

As much as people dismiss him (Dershowitz) as a clown and charlatan and roll their eyes ­ the fact of the matter is that he very effectively makes use of his Harvard pedigree ­ it is a distinguished university and he has an eminent chair of that university and he makes use of those credentials to lend credibility to his work

There’s no question. My biggest enemies are the hard left. The hard left poses a far greater danger to the American future than the hard right. I’m not worried about a few dozen people with Swastikas who want to replace the Jews, because they’re our past. They have no resonance on the University campuses today. But the hard, hard left? Anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity, intolerance for speech, it’s the future. These are our leaders… And that’s why we have to worry much more about what’s going on, on university campuses, than in Charlottesville.

That is why a criminal trial is not a search for truth. Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.