Akhil Reed Amar.

• Author: Amar, Akhil Reed
• Position: Conference to honor Professor Dershowitz

It's an honor to be here today to celebrate the work of Alan Dershowitz. I'm here less to talk about any specific substantive area of law and more to talk about Alan's life.

About a decade ago, as I was thinking about various lives lived in the law that might illuminate the path that lay before my own feet, I stumbled across Alan. In the years since then, much of his life has come to serve as an example for mine. Now, this might seem surprising to some of you. After all, there are some obvious differences. Alan is one of the nation's preeminent litigators. I've never tried a case; I've never argued an appeal. In fact, if you can keep a secret--and I know there's a tape recorder there--I've never taken the Bar. Alan is a remarkable figure on television. My friends have gently told me that, with a face like mine, perhaps I'd do better sticking with newspapers and radio. In case you missed it, Alan is at Harvard Law School. I am at Yale. Alan grew up an orthodox Jew; I did not. Alan is East Coast all the way; I'm a California kid. I've attacked the Exclusionary Rule with some vigor; he's deployed and defended it. He has embodied and explained the vision of a zealous advocate in the context of criminal defense. I've raised some questions about that model. But many of the things that I just talked about, these differences, they're skin deep: Jews and Asians, East and West Coast, Harvard and Yale. There are similarities here as well as differences.

With our mutual interest in issues of criminal defense, ethical advocacy, and the role of truth in the criminal justice system, Alan and I may disagree about some things, but we actually come to these issues with a very similar framework, a framework that tries to integrate a study of the law with an ethical seriousness. Indeed, in a lot of ways, Alan and I are very much products of the same education. We both went to Yale Law School. We both had the same teachers, Guido Calabresi and Joe Goldstein. In fact, Alan Dershowitz's name first came to my attention because of the affectionate stories that his teachers used to tell about him in his student days. They mentored him; later, they mentored me. And I hope Alan is going to talk about some of those things. Steve Breyer is another interesting point of connection between us. Alan and I began teaching at fancy places at rather young ages--he at twenty-five, I think; I at twenty-six. Our friend, Guido Calabresi, also began very early on. When you start at a fancy place early on, much is expected of you. And then, whether you live up to that expectation or not, as you begin to mature, you begin to think, "Well, what am I going to do for an encore; how am I going to redeem the confidence that's been placed in me?" And so, when you reach, as I did about a decade ago, a certain midlife crossroads, you look around for illumination. That's what I did, and that's when I stumbled across Alan.

I want to identify five things that I've taken away from Alan's very great life lived in the law. The first concerns how we first crossed paths--indeed, crossed swords--in print. I published a book called The Constitution and Criminal Procedure. Truth be told, I don't think it's my best work, but I was approaching age forty and I thought, "I have to have a book." I'd done these articles and my publisher put a cover around them, and it looks like a book. And so, there you have it. There were some interesting ideas in the thing; I still stand by the substance of it. I think the tone could have been better. It was a little too edgy, a little too truculent, I think, but it had some ideas and it met with an interesting reaction. Most of the senior people in criminal procedure treated it with a mix of contempt, disdain, and loathing. And then Alan Dershowitz reviewed it, and he disagreed with me about a lot of things. But it was a generous review. Alan doesn't pull his punches. He says, "Look, Amar has these ideas; I, Alan Dershowitz, have a different set of ideas," but Alan engaged my ideas, presented them in a very fair way, and trusted the reader enough to judge for herself what she might think of this point of view and that point of view. Alan's was a remarkable act of scholarly generosity. A senior person in the field, who...