Book Review

• Date: 01 June 1996
• Author: Jack A. Raisner
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1722.1996.tb00244.x
• Published date: 01 June 1996

BOOK

REVIEW

THE ADVOCATE’S DEVIL

BY

ALAN

M.

DERSHOWITZ, Warner

Books,

Ine.,

1994.

372 pp.

Reviewed by JACK A. RAISNER, Assistant Professor

of

Law, St. John’s University, College

of

Business

Administration, Jamaica, New

York.

Law exam essays have a spellbinding effect on the day of the final

but great literature they

are

not. Turning his pen to

a

more popular,

though no less contrived, literary form, the consummate law profes-

sor,

appellate attorney, and media-jurist, Alan M. Dershowitz has

written a legal suspense thriller. In it, Prof. Dershowitz

sets

out to

keep the reader’s attention as riveted

as

a law student’s, and to

drive home certain thoughts about ethics. The result is

The

Advocate’s

Devil,

a

massive novel that

is

being promoted for use in the classroom

to illustrate the difficulties in writing ethical rules and applying them

in real life. Between its bas-relief, glossy, covers, this book, now in

paperback, contains more ethics issues per page than does a check-

out counter rack of potboilers.

Shaping

Ethical

Values

Prof. Dershowitz’ book

is

a drama of ideas rather than characters.

The humans advance the plot serviceably, but

are

there to make the

author’s points. The central figure, Abe Ringel,

is

a civil libertarian

defense lawyer from Harvard Square. He sincerely believes that

what his college-bound feminist daughter finds “mast appealing”

about him are his old-fashioned (‘‘stuck in the

1960s”

1

morality

lessons. Moral lessons swirl around Ringel, as do paradoxes and other

ironic head-scratchers.

At the bottom, what

is

the moral of Dershowitz’ tale? It can be

summed up by the famous quip: “A neo-conservative is a liberal who’s

been mugged.”

Advocate’s

Devil

is not about liberals and conserva-

tives.

It

is

about how personal experience shapes ethical values and