A MOMENT Interview With Alan Dershowitz

A MOMENT INTERVIEW WITH ALAN DERSHOWITZ Let's talk about Jews in American law. Even apart from the stars— Brandeis, Cardozo, Frankfurter— the impact of Jews on the American legal system appears to...

...The issue arises because of the peculiar nature of the legal system as an adversary system...
...I've been asked many times whether or not my own Talmud background—I was a yeshiva student for 12 years—was in any way helpful in becoming a good lawyer...
...it's a movement of family reunification...
...Absolutely...
...I wasn't laughing and whooping it up...
...I presume that you understand the unease with which many laypeople, even people who are committed to civil liberties, react—especially these days, with an epidemic of crime in the country...
...We keep filing documents in conjunction with his Canadian lawyer, Irwin Cotler, and his French lawyer and his English lawyer...
...Somebody would defend them...
...What happened in 1962 in the American legal system is just what happened in the major leagues in 1947-48 when Jackie Robinson came up...
...It would not accept a court-appointed lawyer...
...And there were always Jewish leagues in the practice of law—but they couldn't get a crack at representing the major institutions...
...At this point, I think that's it...
...For example, take the Jewish Defense League...
...was clear that he was a Jew, and every one of his actions was judged by that standard...
...Every year now, we have 25 to 30 students in the entering class who come with a very significant Jewish background, who have been activists at their college campuses and who just can't bear to be without some involvement in Jewish human rights...
...Is that changing...
...First, they ought to be reminding their elected representatives that this is still a high-priority issue...
...I don't think Jews will excel at the university in general out of proportion to their numbers...
...the kinds of things*that were brought up were clearly ethnic in origin—accusing him of sleazy techniques, even of being a lawyer with "Jewish morals," as if to say that was a bad thing to say about someone...
...What happened in 1962...
...I think the issues of emigration on the one hand and of political prisoners on the other hand are very different...
...Cooley's situation and somebody said to me, "Look, there is a black man in South Africa who is not being treated by Dr...
...First of all, the law does not require a capital investment...
...But every so often, maybe once every six months, I get the most poignant and touching letter from a Jew, often a concentration camp survivor...
...Even being a judge in Israel is not nearly as high-prestige a profession...
...There had always been the Negro leagues in baseball...
...The JDLers became liberals as soon as they were indicted...
...There is nothing I would prefer more than not to be Shcharansky's lawyer, to have a real Soviet lawyer who would be more effective...
...You talked before about a role model for Jewish students...
...I always root for the cops...
...Invoke this technicality, that technicality...
...I think this generation of law students will work for the big Wall Street firms but will continue to devote some of their time to human rights, civil liberties and—I'd hope—Jewish issues as well...
...We keep in touch with Soviet delegations at various international conferences...
...Second, I really think that a Talmud background helps you only up to a certain point...
...Still, we want to make sure his conditions are maintained in a tolerable way...
...The Soviets allowed East German lawyers to appear on their behalf, and they couldn't deny the precedent to us...
...She just wanted him to plead guilty and Shcharansky fired her and basically represented himself...
...Can one legally appeal for better conditions or things of that sort...
...I've consistently issued an open invitation to my friends in the National Lawyers Guild who say they are not anti-Semitic or anti-Israel and support the rights of Soviet Jewry, to speak out on behalf of Soviet Jewry...
...we didn't have a civil liberties movement in this country until after 150 years...
...That's right...
...I think the American legal system can only survive if all defendants, the guilty and the innocent, are defended, and defended vigorously...
...We worked somewhat on the example of American lawyers who had appeared in South African courts and in South American courts...
...you can start out with your brain...
...Of course it's a problem...
...He talked about boys coming out of law schools and practicing law like their fathers sold shoestrings on the streets of the Lower East Side of New York...
...I think it is still a fact that all things being equal, a Jew has a slightly harder time getting into Harvard Law School, or getting a clerkship...
...I am, and very often I represent true devils...
...The difference is that Jewish lawyers in the United States really have been relatively successful...
...They asked me to join them...
...In baseball, that led many observers in the 1950s and '60s to comment that blacks were overrepre-sented...
...But the opportunities for Jews to make a lot of money in law are there, and we're living through a situation of contraction in legal opportunities, so I think everybody's running a little scared and more are concerned, initially at least, about getting a good position and satisfying economic needs...
...Well, a lawyer generally has to try to achieve the least worst results for his client...
...I essentially take my orders from my client...
...Still, if you picked out the 25 students in any given class at Harvard Law School who were most interested in civil liberties and public service and Nader's Raiders and human rights and so forth, you would still find a disproportionate number of Jews...
...Of course, I get letters from the Nazis...
...And if the rabbis didn't think of it first, then obviously your point isn't so good...
...Then the court-appointed lawyer would say the same thing...
...But they had legal rights which had to be defended, and I was privileged to defend them, even as I was horrified at the glee that they expressed in walking out of the courtroom free, having just been acquitted of murdering an innocent woman...
...The most touching letter I get is the one that repeats what my grandmother used to tell me when I was growing up—don't attract too much attention, Jews are lightning rods...
...It didn't trust the legal system...
...Indeed, I specialize in that for a very obvious reason...
...The paradox of the influence of Jews on the American legal system is that it has only been for the last 20 years that Jews have been treated as anything but second-class citizens...
...Defense attorneys shouldn't be treated as heroes...
...Christiaan Barnard because he's black, otherwise he would be treating him," I'd fly from Texas to South Africa to treat that man...
...I let the system work its own logic generally, too, unless I disapprove of the reason why the person is not getting a good defense...
...I don't defend the innocent and get them off at the last minute and prove who the guilty person was...
...I am protected and insulated, and if I won't defend the unpopular, how can I ask my students, who will be more economically dependent on the court system and the prosecutors, to do it...
...People call me the devil's advocate...
...As Felix Frankfurter romanticized it in his own writings, Harvard Law School was a place where you could come, short in stature, ugly in face, poor in parentage, empty of pocket, and on the basis of your brainpower alone, make it to the top...
...Of course it's a moral dilemma...
...So it depends on which position you're in...
...But I would hope we'd have the courage to be a Shcharansky...
...I wouldn't join them in any victory party...
...And that's my job—simply put—to defend the guilty...
...A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged...
...Any time there's an international conference I go on behalf of Shcharansky to make a presentation...
...After all, the talmudic system is in many respects a closed system...
...We are trying to make sure the State Department stays on top of his case...
...Or was that pretty much it...
...Obviously we don't expect that we'll be listened to the way an American lawyer is listened to in an American court...
...he's the only client I've ever had with whom I personally identify...
...He's the one who should be exchanged...
...I did it in Madrid at the Helsinki Accords meetings...
...He'd let the system work its own logic...
...Does part of you hope when you are arguing those cases that you'll lose...
...I have tenure at a university...
...I do represent some innocent people, too...
...You can achieve the least worst...
...It is not an embarrassment to be a Jew at Harvard Law School anymore...
...I have a right to speak about any issue that concerns the American public and I will continue to do so, even though I understand the concerns that generate this kind of letter...
...The results may be just as predetermined but the access is more open...
...I don't enjoy getting a guilty defendant off any more than if I were a surgeon and saved the life of a sick person who then went out and shot an innocent victim...
...They're not...
...You've never seen a more liberalizing influence on somebody than to come in conflict with the criminal law...
...A liberal is a conservative who has been audited, a conservative whose son's been charged as a juvenile delinquent, a conservative whose friend has been indicted...
...I regarded those kids as despicable...
...On the issue of emigration on the one hand versus restructuring Soviet society, I accept the view that emigration is a more basic, more easily obtainable human right than the restructuring of the domestic concerns of a society, so I guess that Jewish emigration is different...
...Certainly not any conscious part of me...
...Israel has excelled in precisely those traits necessary for its survival, and the law is not necessary to a country's physical survivals any more than a university is...
...There's a continuing policy debate on exactly that matter...
...We found a provision in the Soviet law which allowed foreign lawyers to represent family members of prisoners...
...And yes, we began to hear that Jews were overrepresented in the legal profession...
...I will never apply a double standard...
...Certainly business people who go over to make deals with the Soviet Union have raised these issues and we find that to be extremely effective...
...I call them the New Jersey letters...
...Turning the question on its head, what is it about the law that has attracted so many Jewish students over the years...
...It was in 1962 that the decision was made by the Wall Street firms to finally open their doors...
...If it does, then I'll say it and I'll continue to say it...
...I always ask my clients what they want me to do, and I have never met a Soviet Jewish activist or a prisoner of conscience who has ever told me to speak out only in behalf of his Jewish cellmates...
...The most important thing is to remember that the only way the State Department will keep up its pressure is if Congress keeps up its pressure, and the only way Congress will keep up its pressure is if it's constantly reminded that this remains a high-priority issue...
...Before 1962 the major Wall Street firms would not hire Jews in the expectation of making them partners...
...Between 7 and 8. I don't believe he will survive his full term, and we are counting on and hoping for an early release...
...A role model can only be important if you have people who find that person an appropriate role model...
...I don't mean an intellectual contribution...
...Look at his confirmation hearings...
...And that, I think, is the dilemma of Jewish criticism of Israel, and that's the only area where I think one has to impose, not a double standard, but a recognition that others impose a double standard and that we therefore have to be sensitive to our responsibility in that context...
...Which creates a natural transition to the Jewish issues that have been of principal concern to you...
...When I'm not wearing my hat as defense attorney, I always root for the good guys...
...Back to the issue of Jews and other things they might do...
...There's one exception, and I've struggled with this as I'm sure many Jews have struggled with it...
...Those are great challenges also, particularly when an innocent client has been wrongly convicted...
...And I have to make myself work as hard for the guilty as for the innocent...
...It was not until well after the Civil War and the normalization of this country in terms of external enemies, who were far more distant than Israel's external enemies, that we began to see the first emergence of the civil liberties movement in the United States...
...Let me tell you, most people who are treated despicably deserve it...
...They might hire a Jew who could bring an enormous amount of business with him, but as late as 1960, when I personally experienced it, there was a double standard for the selection of Jewish associates and the selection of non-Jewish associates...
...That's now changed too, of course...
...They'd be listened to...
...You've heard the line, "What's a conservative...
...But this is not the time for us to make an initiative on his behalf to be freed...
...When Felix Frankfurter came to the Law School, he was made to feel his outsiderness...
...I don't practice in any given court where I have to rely on the good graces of the judge or the prosecutor...
...On the specific question of the Jewish attraction to the law, we do have a piece of interesting comparative data...
...The adversary system has many problems, but all the other systems have greater problems...
...After you've been indicted, you're a liberal...
...For me one of the great disappointments of Israel has been that it hasn't developed the kind of interest in civil liberties that has so typified Jewish lawyers in this country...
...By the way, my own prediction is that as we enter into the 21st century, Jews won't still excel in the law out of proportion to their numbers...
...Usually you can't achieve good results...
...it is not a high-prestige profession...
...But for me they are placed at a different level of priority...
...Cooley: I don't know Dr...
...I was persuaded that there had to be another way, and started up a project that involved American lawyers on behalf of Soviet Jews...
...You just can't say, "I'll do it but I won't work very hard...
...you see the stupid, the corrupt, the brilliant, you see every kind...
...Do we go it alone, on the theory that whatever special clout we have, we alone have, and the Soviets can't be expected to open the doors to everybody on issues of emigration...
...I really have to provide a role model to all students, to be willing to stand up for an unpopular defendant, a reprehensible defendant, a guilty defendant...
...But the day-to-day job of a criminal defense lawyer is to represent the guilty, and you can't do that with one hand tied behind your back...
...We tried very hard to get the Soviets to appoint a real lawyer and in fact got a volunteer...
...I don't know that I would...
...How many years remain of his sentence...
...That's right...
...That's not to say that I will never criticize Israel, but I will think about the realities of how the press will treat Jewish criticism of Israel as compared to how the press will treat Jewish criticism of other countries...
...civil liberties are always more important to the minority than to the majority, and in the United States Jews are a minority and in Israel they're a majority...
...I've written many other letters and they have been buried...
...I hope nobody out there experiences either of those terrible evils...
...And then they appointed another woman to represent him, but she was essentially a KGB cheerleader and would have nothing to do with actually representing him...
...What are you doing for him now...
...I would hope we would have the courage...
...More Harvard law students, the ones 1 know best, are more willing these days to identify with Jewish civil liberties, with Jewish civil rights, than were before...
...By the way, some of the people who were most at fault for that were the Jewish industrialists and the Jewish wealthy on Wall Street, many of whom, in a kind of self-hating way, turned quite deliberately to the Gentile firms to represent them even though they knew they might not be getting as effective representation as they would be getting from Jewish firms...
...I for one thrive on it...
...Are Jews still coming here in the same kinds of crazy proportions that they have in the past...
...It's been predicted to us repeatedly by Soviet authorities that Shcharansky's name will soon be forgotten, as will the others...
...That was reported on the front page of The New York Times...
...It's a very high level of compatibility that we have...
...And here's this really smart guy investing his resources in getting these hoodlums off...
...Let's go back for a minute to the issue of defending people you know to be guilty, to being the devil's advocate...
...But I'll do exactly the same for a guilty client as I will for an innocent one...
...But a case where I'm willing to take on the establishment, where I'm willing to blow the whistle on a judge, where I'm willing to blow the whistle on a prosecutor, where a day-to-day defense attorney can't afford to do that because his business will go down the tubes...
...Is there anything American Jews ought to he doing...
...I love finding students with whom I can work...
...I might then write a memo for internal consumption...
...Why should I use my talents to represent this person...
...I would not say that the Israeli Bar has been extraordinary or distinguished...
...they just weren't covered by the press...
...And that's true...
...The fate of the Jewish prisoners is tied up inexorably with the fate of the non-Jewish prisoners of conscience...
...You can't have a double standard when somebody is rolled into the emergency ward of a hospital as to whom you'll treat and whom you won't treat, and you can't have a double standard when you're a lawyer as to whom you will defend and whom you won't defend...
...When we won the case and they walked out of the courtroom, free, they had a victory party...
...And this is the man who wrote the canon of ethics with which we are still supposed to comply...
...The mere fact that I am not a court-appointed lawyer doesn't free me...
...South African courts and South American courts are different from Soviet courts...
...Again to go back to the surgeon analogy, once the surgeon takes the case, even if it's the most despicable criminal he's performing surgery on, he wants to win the case...
...We're looking for whatever we can get...
...We are very optimistic in our representations...
...I'm no Perry Mason...
...We're beginning to lose out...
...It's been one of the great disappointments that organizations like the National Lawyers Guild, who would have real impact on the Soviet Union, have refused to say anything about Shcharansky...
...When you grow up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood like the one I grew up in—all Jewish—it's very different from a place like Harvard where only a small number have filtered through...
...Do you have the sense that as Jewish students here in America make their selections of the kinds of fields of law that they want to specialize in or commit themselves to, that the older tradition of public service is declining...
...I so vividly remember my rebbes in school telling me every time I wanted to make a point that I thought was a novel or creative point, "If your point was so good, then the rabbis, who were smarter than you, would obviously have thought of it first...
...Civil liberties are seen by many Israelis as a luxury...
...To go back to your analogy of the surgeon who does not deny his services, I don't suppose that Dr...
...I tell my innocent clients—and there are some— that I'm not going to do anything for them that I wouldn't do for a guilty client, because that would be doing something unethical...
...I don't like most of my clients, but I feel it absolutely essential to defend the guilty, the despised, the reprehensible...
...And, as happened in the major leagues, there was an immediate flow of talent...
...Those are the anti-Semitic letters that I get in great numbers no matter what I'm doing...
...It's also a repatriation movement...
...This is not the time to expect things from the Soviet Union...
...I'm prepared to take on that kind of case...
...That kind of a closed system will make you into a ? lawyer, which is very good, but if you want to crack the system and become an A lawyer, you have to go outside the talmudic system or the legal system and begin to impose your own world view on it, and that's not possible for anybody who perceives either the law or the Talmud from an entirely religious perspective...
...Sometimes it's written in broken English and it will say, "Look, I don't disagree with what you are saying, but the majority of Americans probably do, and as a Jew you owe a responsibility of silence, because if you speak out against the majority on issues like the exclusionary rules, civil liberties, pornography, the First Amendment, you name it, you will generate anti-Semitism, and we don't want to see a repetition of what went on in Germany...
...In Brooklyn, you see every kind of Jew, just as you would in Israel or as you probably would have in a shtetl in Poland...
...They are unanimous on this one, on the view that the non-Jews are as important to the Jewish community as Shcharansky and the other Jewish prisoners...
...They were bucking incredible odds...
...Going back to Dr...
...But when the legal system can't provide representation because lawyers are unwilling to involve themselves in cases of reprehensible characters, I think that's a breakdown in the legal system...
...Therefore, I have a much greater responsibility to defend unpopular cases...
...I will never lie or do anything improper...
...And if somebody tells me that a particular defendant is not getting adequate representation because he's politically unpopular, reprehensible, I'll defend him—even if he deserves to be thought reprehensible...
...It's the purpose of the legal system to distinguish guilty from innocent...
...If you didn't, they'd presumably get a court-appointed lawyer...
...In the comparable period of our history in the United States we had the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws...
...it may also be a function of, as you suggest, time and the opportunity to breathe a bit freer and to start paying attention to the grace notes of life...
...It reminds me of that wonderful story that's told of Meir Kahane when he was arrested during one of the Kach demonstrations in Israel, and he was manhandled by the police and he complained, "In the United States I've never been roughed up by the cops this way," and the policeman answered, "Yeah, but here we don't have to worry about the Jewish vote...
...Do you have a problem in putting up the kind of excellent defense of which you are capable for clients whose behavior you find reprehensible...
...We've suggested it...
...I don't like to take easy cases...
...That's understandable...
...I recently heard that Justice Potter Stewart, who is a wonderful man, a wonderful Justice, criticized one of his brethren on the Supreme Court a couple of years ago because that brother Justice had selected Jews for all three of his law clerks...
...Many things...
...The interest in civil liberties in Israel has in the last three, four, five years begun to jell...
...My essential job is to represent the guilty and to do my damnedest to get them off if I possibly can...
...I wasn't rooting for them...
...there are a lot of smart lawyers around...
...What we are trying to do at this point is to keep him alive...
...But every time I think about the lawyers in the Soviet Union who won't put up an excellent or even a mediocre defense on behalf of clients whom they believe to be reprehensible or guilty—such as Anatoly Shcharansky—I resolve that dilemma on the side of putting forth the best defense...
...In fact his code of responsibility was written in part as an antidote to what was seen as the proliferation of Jewish morals in the legal marketplace...
...They're more open than the Soviet courts...
...So it's only 20 years in which Jews have had anything like equality of access into the judicial system...
...My first criterion in taking a case—and it will sound arrogant and it will sound egotistical-—is if it's a case where I think I can make an unique contribution...
...So far, we've managed to get early releases for most of our clients...
...Greater proportions...
...So we went to the Soviet Union and asked to be recognized as American counsel, initially for the families of Soviet prisoners...
...I'm in constant contact with Elliot Abrams, who is, at the time of this interview, the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights...
...And he gave one of the most dramatic closing arguments in the history of law...
...It trusted me because I came from Brooklyn and my family grew up with their families...
...Being a lawyer in Israel is not like being a lawyer in the United States...
...lawyers, particularly lawyers who've never been in a criminal court, understand the adversary system when it comes to representing wealthy corporate clients, but when it comes to representing the guilty and despised they wonder whether it should really operate...
...And I understand and support the high priority that Jews give to Jewish emigration while also continuing to support other human rights issues within the Soviet Union...
...That's my job...
...So a Talmud background or a Jewish background helps, but it doesn't explain why Jews have been good lawyers...
...Most American Jews probably are totally unaware than an American attorney, an American professor of law, was formally—not merely symbolically—involved in the Shcharansky case...
...Obviously, we would welcome that, but our ability to operate depends largely on bilateral and multilateral politics...
...Some of the most effective presentations have come through Western European Communist Parties, and I am not embarrassed to deal with Communist Parties on behalf of my client...
...But if I think it warrants a page 68 story and I know it's going to get a first page story then I may not say it, because I don't want to participate in somebody else imposing a double standard on Israel...
...It is necessary to its cultural survival...
...I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I had signed hundreds of letters critical of the human rights policies of every country in the world, far more critical of most countries' human rights policies, and those letters usually appeared on page 65 or didn't appear at all...
...I think there's no higher calling in the American legal system than representing the despised and the poor...
...The same people who criticized lawyers for representing the Black Panthers were saying to me, "Hey, how come you don't do as good as the Black Panthers'lawyers do...
...We got a wonderful Soviet lawyer who volunteered to be his lawyer but they deported her...
...There are no Nobel prizes for law, and there shouldn't be...
...I served as volunteer counsel and would be harangued daily at Shmulke Bernstein's by the JDL leadership about American Jews doing nothing, being just like the Jews who sat by when the Nazis killed our brothers and sisters, and the only way is the way of violence...
...A couple of firms said to themselves, "Why the hell are we practicing in this competitive world with one hand tied behind our backs...
...I can never rest until Shcharansky is freed...
...That is, he wants to save the person's life...
...Thanks—for the time and for the hope...
...Anybody who thinks Jews are smarter than everybody else didn't grow up in Brooklyn...
...So I must ask myself a question: Does what I'm about to say concerning Israel warrant a first page story...
...I don't like criminals...
...Even apart from the stars— Brandeis, Cardozo, Frankfurter— the impact of Jews on the American legal system appears to have been .extraordinary...
...The United States has ever so much larger a number of lawyers per capita than any other country except for Israel, which beats us hands down...
...But in the Shcharansky case, there but for the grace of my great-grandparents go I, you, many of us...
...I saw myself essentially as a court-appointed lawyer, not appointed by the court but in some respects appointed by the system...
...Whenever there's talk of an exchange of prisoners, we're there on behalf of our client saying, "Hey...
...We would really like to get the support, more than we now have it, of the Left, the American Left...
...These distinctions are largely a function of social and economic considerations that are disappearing from the Jewish culture...
...Let's move if we may to the general issue that your representation of the JDL raises, the issue I'm sure will be raised in the minds of many people who read your book and has been raised by a number of the reviewers of your book...
...There is a very famous man named Drinker who wrote a code of ethics for professional responsibility, and he railed against Jewish morals...
...I will never do anything unethical...
...I'm an American...
...I'm performing a professional role...
...And that is whether you have a single standard for when you will criticize Israel...
...But so far there's been a deafening silence from the American Left...
...That derived historically from the fact that there were Germans in Soviet prisons, and East Germans particularly...
...Those right-wing nogoodniks who would deprive everybody else of all their rights suddenly were wrapping themselves in the American flag and the Bill of Rights...
...I might then write a letter to the Prime Minister...
...He's a great hero— and is being treated in the most despicable way possible...
...I remember the day that I signed a letter which many of us signed, 56 prominent Jewish Americans critical of Elon Moreh...
...I'm not here to tell you my clients are angels...
...And I answer every one of those letters...
...The large number of Jews in the legal profession continues to create a problem for Jews in the sense that no legal institution wants to exceed a rough but nonetheless palpable breaking point...
...Get us off...
...How about our man...
...Well, first of all, Cardozo, Frankfurter and Brandeis didn't have yeshiva backgrounds, and they were a hell of a lot better lawyers than I will ever be...
...I don't generally identify with my clients...
...It can't go on the back burner...
...We understand the political nature of the situation...
...Once I take a case, I want to win...
...It originated in my representation of a couple of kids from the Jewish Defense League in the early 1970s when they couldn't get another lawyer...
...When Brandeis was nominated to the Supreme Court, it Alan Dershowitz, author of the recently-released book, The Best Defense (Random House), is Professor of Law at Harvard University...
...Whenever I see a postmark from there I know what's coming, the postmark and the scribbling on the side of the envelope...
...That's probably understandable...
...It came as a surprise to me, too...
...And I say that for me to remain silent) as an American because I'm a Jew would be the ultimate surrender to the double standard and the ultimate vindication of everything that went on in Germany...
...and w? can't neglect the non-Jewish prisoners of conscience either, those who've stood together with Jewish prisoners of conscience...
...It's not only laymen who don't understand the adversary system...
...Why did it happen...
...we had a real retrenchment from the civil liberties reflected in the Bill of Rights...
...But what's a liberal...
...The fact that a man like Shcharansky, untutored in the law, could have written that statement in the chilling solitude of his prison cell is remarkable...
...Cooley would fly from Houston for somebody who was being treated by a competent but not distinguished resident in a county hospital in Oregon unless there were very compelling reasons for him to do that...
...Has anybody done that yet...
...You should have heard them talking about the Fourth Amendment and the Fifth Amendment...
...Aside from your own utility as a role model, which I'm sure has been one of the variables here, is it that the general climate at Harvard with respect to its congeniality to identifying Jews has changed...
...Yes, it's not as noticeable or obvious a preoccupation as it may have been some years ago...
...For any client, I will go up to the point I'm permitted to go...
...You're really defending the system, rather than the guilty—but that's a difficult distinction for many people...
...Second, they ought to be introducing shareholder resolutions in companies in which they have financial interests, stocks, that are doing business with the Soviet Union, in order to keep it on the agenda...
...That's when I like to become involved...
...But that's his job...
...It may be a majority-minority issue...
...Firms that were either beginning to become integrated or were already mostly Jewish firms were winning in the marketplace, and the big Wall Street firms were beginning to feel that they couldn't compete by selecting from only half the available pool...
...Cooley, but if I were in Dr...
...I don't expect to win any prizes for it...
...And let me tell you how I've eventually resolved that, partly through painful experience...
...I think they're happy to find people on the faculty who^m they couldn't have found 20 years ago, who are willing to work with them, who are willing to say they are doing wonderful things...
...For some reason, there are more kooks in Union, New Jersey, than anywhere else...
...One of the great tragedies—understandable, necessary, but nonetheless a tragedy—is what no one would have expected after the establishment of Israel: that that country would emerge with one of the world's great armies, and a good, but not absolutely first-rate, university, and a good, but not absolutely first-rate, legal profession...
...In that regard the contributions of people like Brandeis, Cardozo, Frankfurter and dozens and dozens of others whose names will never be remembered because they were invisible, just can't be overstated...
...After you've been mugged, you are a conservative...
...If there's something deep in my unconscious psyche that makes me work harder for an innocent person than a guilty person, I wouldn't be surprised, but I would never justify that rationally, and if I ever saw it in myself I would fight against it...

Vol. 7 • July 1982 • No. 7


 
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