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4.2.12
WC: 191694

The Vietnam War

During the height of the conflict over the Vietnam War, I represented numerous defendants, protestors and civil disobedients. I also advised lawyers who were suing the government in an effort to stop what they believe was an illegal war. The faculty of Harvard Law School was divided over the morality, legality and effectiveness of the war, and there were interesting discussions in the faculty lunch room involving such luminaries as Archibald Cox, Erwin Griswold, Abram Chayes and Paul Freund. I decided that these discussions should be shared with our students, and so I organized the first law school class on the Vietnam War. The debate over the war was a teaching moment and we had to take advantage of it. I prepared a set of legal materials and invited professors with different views to share their perspectives with the students. The course was a remarkable success. Students attended in droves, and the media covered the lectures. The New York Times story was headlined “400 Enroll in a Harvard Course on ‘Law and the Lawyer’ in the Vietnam War.” It reported that:

According to Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz, who conceived the course, more than a dozen professors have volunteered as teachers, including Prof. Derek C. Bok, the dean-designate of the law school.

Professor Dershowitz said that the participating professors “reflect every view.” However, he said that he “majority,” including himself, were signers of a statement released last week in which 500 of the nation’s law teachers called upon the legal profession to oppose the Johnson Administration’s Vietnam war policy.
Professor Dershowitz said he understood that the course would be the first of its kind offered in any law school in the United States. “It is our hope,” he said, “that this will be a pilot and a model for other law schools throughout the country.”

Dr. Dershowitz said that the idea for the course grew out of the fact that “much student and faculty energy was being devoted to thinking about and writing about Vietnam, and the legal issues growing out of it.”

He said the course would not be “biased or political,” but would “look at these issues in a detached, lawyer-like, scholarly way.”…

Mr. Dershowitz, whose specialty is criminal law, said he became involved in planning the course because “I’m very interested in legal education, and terribly concerned about law schools being at the center of contemporary issues.”
“Can you imagine a law school which is supposed to be dealing with the major issues of the day not teaching a course relating in some manner to the Vietnam War, which is the critical social issue of our time?”

As evidence of the courses appeal, Professor Dershowitz said that the 400 registrations represented the largest enrollment for any course at the school, which has about 1,500 students.

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