The Good Fight Fought Wrong

In one sense, the latest feud between two Harvard Law School professors is just more of the same: a Twitter war of no particular distinction. But in another sense, it seems to be a reminder that behind the all-too-high-and-mighty walls of the ivory tower we are by no means safe from an insidious form of contemporary political swordplay.

Since Law School professor emeritus Alan M. Dershowitz announced his decision to join President Donald Trump’s defense team for the 2020 United States Senate impeachment trial, Law School Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 has engaged Dershowitz in a public, turned personal war of verbiage over the merits of Dershowitz’s arguments against impeaching Trump.

While a lifelong Democrat, Dershowitz became one of Trump’s most vocal intellectual defenders, arguing that the charges brought by the U.S. House of Representatives against Trump on the grounds of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress were not impeachable. Part of this defense included providing speaking on the Senate floor against impeachment. On the other hand, Tribe has argued that Dershowitz reduced a legitimate constitutional proceeding to a matter of semantics, in addition to claiming that Derschwitz had become “a bit of a publicity hog and a celebrity seeking fellow.” Dershowitz has fired back with equally fiery language, calling Tribe “a zealot and a partisan” and alleging that he has attempted to silence him.

This debacle takes place at a time when students at the Law School are questioning the roles and responsibilities of lawyers in our society. Last month, dozens of Law School students protested a recruiting event held by corporate law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, which has represented the oil and gas company ExxonMobil in ongoing climate change litigation. And, one year ago, Law Professor and former Winthrop House Faculty Dean Ronald S. Sullivan, Jr.’s divisive defense of Harvey Weinstein similarly drew protest and divided campus opinion.

As such, the disagreement between Dershowitz and Tribe must be viewed as but one of many arguments in the broader discourse of what good legal defense looks like, taking place on our campus and across the U.S.

Dershowitz absolutely has the right to defend President Trump, both as a private citizen and trial lawyer. Over his high-profile criminal law career, Dershowitz has defended Wikileaks, Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson, and Claus von Bülow, among others. Moreover, where we notably argued last year that Sullivan’s obligations to the students of Winthrop House provided a conflict of professional interests in his representation of Weinstein, Dershowitz — as far as we can tell — lacks any such competing obligations.

A functioning legal system should guarantee everyone equal protection under the law. Central to that principle is that every defendant, from the most underprivileged to the most controversial or unpopular, is entitled to legal representation. As heinous as some of the crimes the accused he defended were charged with, we believe it has been within his rights and the dignity of his profession to do so.

That said, we recognize that professors and more generally members of the Harvard community will disagree on matters of contemporary politics and legal matters. We encourage this disagreement of opinion, including on the topic of impeachment, believing that disagreement can engender critical and mutually beneficial discourse.

Still, we wish this discourse remained firmly centered on the ideas at stake and did not devolve into ad hominem attacks. Dershowitz has invited Tribe to take their squabble off Twitter and instead hold an “academic” debate about the matter. Such a debate, if opened up for the public to hear, could provide fodder for robust discourse among legal scholars, students, and the general public about one of the most important constitutional and political matters of our generation. In doing so, Dershowitz and Tribe would have the chance to demonstrate what healthy academic disagreement looks like. As it stands, however, their juvenile jabs and attempts at character assassination only perpetuate the clickbaity fueding that now mires the national public sphere.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.