When I was a third-year law student, I wrote a paper on obscenity jurisprudence. A couple of nights before the paper was due, I was completely stuck on a particular concept – I don’t remember the issue, but I remember that there was something I couldn’t quite reconcile in my argument.
I had interviewed Professor Alan Dershowitz about obscenity laws a few years before as a Cincinnati Post reporter and figured he would be able to help me with this topic. So, I called Directory Assistance for Cambridge, Massachusetts, obtained his home number and called him up. He answered and told me that he was busy hosting a dinner party, but promised to call me later that night after his guests left.
Certain that this was a polite dismissal and that I wouldn’t hear back from him, I eventually went to bed. A couple of hours later, the phone rang and Professor Dershowitz was on the line. “Ok, everyone has finally gone home, so I can talk. What’s your question?”
And for the next half hour, Professor Dershowitz listened to my predicament, walked me through my arguments and even played devil’s advocate to help me test and solidify my approach. He then thanked me for asking for his thoughts, wished me good luck with my paper and signed off.
I never forgot Professor Dershowitz’s kindness to me, a law student he barely knew. And in the ensuing years, as he’s become a media celebrity whose takes on the law seem increasingly bizarre, the deep store of goodwill I had for him kept me from criticizing him.
But that supply of goodwill is getting mighty sparse – in fact, I’m now scraping the bottom of the barrel to find any. Listening to this learned man justify the unjustifiable and claim that a president is virtually above the law is nothing less than shocking – and his unsupportable argument is being condemned by reputable legal scholars across the country for good reason. Whether he truly believes this or is cravenly misrepresenting the law for some other purpose known only to him, Professor Dershowitz seems to have completely lost his way as a lawyer, teacher and person with integrity.
This spectacle is disappointing, at best. And the man engaging in it bears no resemblance to the thoughtful, patient and dedicated professor I encountered 30 years ago.