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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 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 held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there from 1993 until his retirement in December 2013.
Dershowitz was involved in several high-profile legal cases and was 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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