Taking the Stand: My Life in the LawAmerica's most prominent legal mind and the #1 bestselling author of Chutzpah and The Best Defense, Alan Dershowitz, recounts his legal autobiography, describing how he came to the law, as well as the cases that have changed American jurisprudence over the past 50 years, most of which he has personally been involved in. In Taking the Stand, Dershowitz reveals the evolution of his own thinking on such fundamental issues as censorship and the First Amendment, Civil Rights, Abortion, homicide and the increasing role that science plays in a legal defense. Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard University, and the author of such acclaimed bestsellers as Chutzpah, The Best Defense, and Reversal of Fortune, for the first time recounts his legal biography, describing his struggles academically at Yeshiva High School growning up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, his successes at Yale, clerking for Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, his appointment to full professor at the Harvard at age 28, the youngest in the school's history. Dershowitz went on to work on many of the most celebrated cases in the land, from appealing (successfully) Claus Von Bulow's conviction for the murder of his wife Sunny, to the O.J. Simpson trial, to defending Mike Tyson, Leona Helmsley, Patty Hearst, and countless others. He is currently part of the legal team advising Julian Assange. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
PART I | 11 |
My Secular Education | 48 |
My Clerkships | 56 |
Beginning My Life as an Academic | 84 |
PART II | 103 |
Direct and Vicarious Offensiveness of Obscenity | 119 |
Disclosure of Secrets | 142 |
The Death Penalty for Those Who Dont Kill | 213 |
Using Science Law Logic and Experience | 228 |
Death Politics Religion and International Intrigue | 275 |
Death Cases from the Classroom to the Courtroom | 309 |
The Changing Politics of Rape | 322 |
The Changing Impact of the Media on the | 354 |
The Changing Face of Race | 387 |
The Crumbling Wall Between Church and State | 398 |
Expressions That Incite Violence and Disrupt Speakers | 157 |
The Right to Falsify History and Science | 166 |
Io Defamation and Privacy | 176 |
Speech That Supports Terrorist Groups | 184 |
Life Intrudes on | 190 |
Death Is Different | 203 |
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