Finding Jefferson

Alan Dershowitz

Description

The #1 New York Times bestselling author, Harvard Law School professor, and tireless defender of civil liberties unearths a little-known letter by his hero, Thomas Jefferson, and shares its secrets. The letter illuminates Jefferson’s views on freedom of speech in a way that has important implications for the country today, particularly in the struggle against terrorism. This book is about the remarkable letter Dershowitz found, how he found it, and why it matters not only to him, but to us today.

Sujets

• Security International
• Security National
• Political Science
• First Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Alan Dershowitz
• Thomas Jefferson

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620458808
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

findings
JEFFERSON
BOOKS BY ALAN DERSHOWITZ
Blasphemy: How the Religious Right Is Hijacking
Our Declaration of Independence
Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways
What Israel Means to Me
Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory
of the Origins of Rights
America on Trial
The Case for Peace
The Case for Israel
America Declares Independence
Why Terrorism Works
Shouting Fire
Letters to a young Lawyer
Supreme Injustice
Genesis of Justice
Just Revenge
Sexual McCarthyism
The Vanishing American Jew
Reasonable Doubts
The Abuse Excuse
The Advocate s Devil
Contrary to Popular Opinion
Chutzpah
Taking Liberties
Reversal of Fortune
Best Defense
Criminal Law: Theory and Process
Psychoanalysis: Psychiatry and Law
finding
JEFFERSON
A L OST L ETTER, A R EMARKABLE D ISCOVERY, AND THE F IRST A MENDMENT IN AN A GE OF T ERRORISM
ALAN DERSHOWITZ
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2008 by Alan Dershowitz. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
Photo credits: page 8, Suzanne Kreiter for the Boston Globe; pages 10, 11, 15, 17, 23, 80, Alan Dershowitz; pages 21, 22, 24, Tom Ashe; page 52, Metropolitan Museum of Art; page 196, courtesy Library of Congress
Wiley Bicentennial Logo: Richard J. Pacifico
Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., III River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com .

ISBN 978-0-470-16711-3


10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to my fellow flea-market mavens, used-book-store stalkers, compulsive collectors, and eBay addicts. May you never pass up the perfect tchotchke. Jefferson could have been describing frustrated collectors who passed up good acquisitions when he cautioned his nephew about frustrated travelers:
Their eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost and its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first and most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy object here, and they carry home with the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy.
May you always come home with worthy objects.
This book is also dedicated to my history professor, John Hope Franklin, who brought American history alive by teaching it, writing it, and living it.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
PART I T HE C OLLECTOR AND H IS P ASSIONS
1 My Passion for Collecting
2 My Passions for Freedom of Speech, Criminal Law, and Thomas Jefferson
PART II T HE L ETTER
3 Finding the Jefferson Letter
4 The Provenance of the Jefferson-Boardman Letter
PART III M Y L ETTER TO J EFFERSON
5 Where We Have Come since 1826
6 Jefferson s First Argument: An Expressed Opinion Can Never Constitute an Overt Act
7 Jefferson s Second Argument: If Conscience Is the Umpire, Then Each Judge s Conscience Will Govern
8 Jefferson s Third Argument: We Have Nothing to Fear from the Demoralizing Reasonings of Some, if Others Are Left Free to Demonstrate Their Errors
9 Jefferson s Fourth Argument: The Law Stands Ready to Punish the First Criminal Act Produced by the False Reasoning
10 Jefferson s Fifth Argument: These Are Safer Correctives than the Conscience of a Judge
PART IV W HAT W OULD J EFFERSON S AY ABOUT T ERRORISM AND F REEDOM OF S PEECH T ODAY ?
11 Jefferson s Views on the Terrorism of His Era
12 Jefferson s Actions in the Burr Case
13 Jefferson s Views on Torture, Habeas Corpus, and Other Issues Currently Debated in the Context of Terrorism
14 How Would Jefferson Strike the Balance between Freedom of Speech and Prevention of Terrorism?
15 My View, as Influenced by Jefferson and the Experiences of Our Time
Appendix A A Transcript of the Jefferson Letter and a Letterpress Copy
Appendix B Excerpted from Discourse: Truth Its Own Test and God Its Only Judge
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I found the Jefferson letter on Friday, September 8, 2006, and by Monday, September 11, 2006, I had written nearly ten thousand words of this book. For me, writing, collecting, and Jefferson are powerful compulsions. Writing about finding Jefferson became a supercompulsion. But even compulsive writers need help.
I was assisted in the research by Peter Mulcahy, Charles Johnson, and Michael Sugar. My agent, Helen Rees, and my editor, Hana Lane, turned my compulsion into this book. My family members, who tolerate my compulsions, provided the usual doses of encouragement and constructive criticism. My friends, including Roland Savage, read the manuscript and offered suggestions.
My most profound thanks goes to Thomas Jefferson for preserving his brilliant ideas in letters and for understanding that these letters, if preserved for history, provide a unique insight into a complex mind that helped found our great nation.
PART
I

T HE C OLLECTOR AND H IS P ASSIONS
1

My Passion for Collecting
I m a collector. I ve always been a collector. As a kid I collected Brooklyn Dodger autographs, baseball cards, comic books, stamps, coins, bottle tops, and anything else that could fit into one drawer in the bureau I shared with my younger brother (and even some things that couldn t, like tropical fish). I never threw anything away (except the dead fish), much to my mother s chagrin.
What are you gonna do with all that junk? she asked imploringly.
It s gonna be valuable someday, I responded, pointing with pride to my neatly organized treasures.
And they would have been valuable someday-at least, the comic books and the baseball cards-had my mother not thrown them out the minute I left home for law school (I lived at home while attending Brooklyn College). I once found a T-shirt that well summarized my plight (and that of an entire generation of young collectors). It said, Once I was a millionaire . . . then my mother threw my baseball cards away.
My mother, who was a frugal survivor of the Great Depression, didn t throw away my stamps or coins. Those she gave to my brother and younger cousins, who kept them until they left home, when these collections were promptly recycled to yet younger relatives. Because I was the oldest among my more than thirty first cousins, the recycling went only one way, with me being the involuntary recycler and never the recyclee of any good stuff. Where my treasures are now, no one knows, and I suspect that the statute of limitations has long since passed on any repleven action (a lawsuit for return of property) I might have had against cousin Norman. The comic books, the baseball cards, and the autographs my mother simply threw into the garbage, because-unlike the stamps and the coins, which were currency-they had no intrinsic value. The remainder of my tchotchkes (Yiddish for inexpensive collectibles) went to some deserving neighborhood kid or to tchotchke heaven. All I know is I never saw them again.
Nor did I really care. After all, I was going to law school-Yale, to boot. (My mother never forgave me for turning down Harvard. For years she told people, He got into Harvard, but he went to Yale. ) I was on to bigger and better things. The Dodgers had abandoned Brooklyn for Los Angeles, and I had abandoned baseball (at least until I moved to Boston and joined Red Sox Nation ). Who needed comic books when I could read Blackstone s Commentaries on the Law ?
My penchant for collecting didn t abandon me, however. It just went in a different direction. I d managed to find three volumes of an early American edition of Blackstone. (I m still looking for the fourth to complete my set-the 1791 edition. If anyone has it for sale, please be in touch.) I started to collect autographs of Supreme Court Justices, Vanity Fair prints, and old books. I have found first editions of books by Lewis Carroll, Theodore Herzl, Anne Frank, and others. When I became a full professor at Harvard in 1967 (that s when my mother finally stopped complaining that I had chosen Yale), Professor Henry Hart gave me an original copy of the complete transcript of the Sacco-Vanzetti trial that had been owned by Felix Frank