Quote

Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech.

Alan Dershowitz

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Alan Dershowitz
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: September 1
Lawyer
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Brooklyn
New York
Alan M. Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz
Laws
Enacted
Speech
Unpopular
Dangerous
Blunt
Law
Censorship
Sharp
Instruments
Misapplied
Easily
Marginally
Merely
Scalpels

More quotes by Alan Dershowitz

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I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.
Alan Dershowitz
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The law is agnostic about truth.
Alan Dershowitz
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Individuals have the right to pick and choose which expressions to condemn, which to praise and which to say nothing about. Governments, however, must remain neutral as to the content of expression. And governments must protect the rights of all to express even the most despicable of views.
Alan Dershowitz
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African-Americans are as fair as any other group, but they bring their life experiences to bear as just as whites bring their experiences to bear.
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I think we're seeing privacy diminish, not by laws... but by young people who don't seem to value their privacy.
Alan Dershowitz
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I can't find anything in the Constitution that says you prefer the life of the mother, or the convenience of the mother if it's an abortion by choice, over the potential life of the fetus. Look, I think women, if they're required to not have abortions, could die and could - so I favor a woman's right to choose.
Alan Dershowitz
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It is difficult to offend a New Yorker.
Alan Dershowitz
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Such technological tools ... are helping us now in the hot war against terrorists who would bomb this theater if they had the capacity to do so.
Alan Dershowitz
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Great research universities must insist on independence from government and on the exercise of academic freedom.
Alan Dershowitz
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There is a paranoid streak in American life. Radio talk show hosts tend to foment that paranoid streak in American life.
Alan Dershowitz
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I'm not a single-issue person, but I spend so much time on Israel because it is so unfairly condemned around the world.
Alan Dershowitz
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I've written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy.
Alan Dershowitz
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Our First Amendment expresses a far different calculus for regulating speech than for regulating nonexpressive conduct and that is as it should be. The right to swing your fist should end at the tip of my nose, but your right to express your ideas should not necessarily end at the lobes of my ears.
Alan Dershowitz
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My goal is always to keep support for Israel a bi-partisan issue and never make a national election any kind of referendum on Israel.
Alan Dershowitz
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The Second Amendment has no place in modern society.
Alan Dershowitz
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That's when civil liberty suffers - when we think special times justify the diminution of civil liberties. And I'm not going to accept that.
Alan Dershowitz
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I've thought hard about my psychological connections and I think I've managed to separate out the psychological from the legal, moral, and political.
Alan Dershowitz
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In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.
Alan Dershowitz
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You know, it's ironic to me that Christians want to keep the Ten Commandments in our schools, because Christianity has abrogated four of the Ten Commandments. For example, the Sabbath day according to the Ten Commandments is Saturday, not Sunday. And the reason is because God rested, not because Jesus was resurrected.
Alan Dershowitz
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I was critical of race-based affirmative action early on in my career and I've changed my mind. And I've publicly acknowledged that I was wrong.
Alan Dershowitz