Whatever Happened To Alan Dershowitz From The OJ Simpson Case?

Some people may only know lawyer Alan Dershowitz from when he drew headlines as former U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyer. But Dershowitz actually has a lengthy history in the legal field, taking on cases for high-profile celebrities and politicians throughout his career. What has Alan Dershowitz done since the O.J. Simpson case — and what is he up to these days?

Alan Dershowitz was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York (via Britannica). After graduating from college in 1962, he worked as a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals and then for the U.S. Supreme Court. He started teaching at Harvard Law School just two years later and soon joined the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Even in his early years, Dershowitz made a name for himself when he was unafraid to take on distasteful clients or legal issues that others wouldn't (via Encyclopedia.com). In 1969, he took on a case to enforce a movie theater's right to play a sexually explicit film; then, in 1976, he represented a porn actor who was sued for his attempt to distribute the movie across state lines as an actor in the film. Dershowitz won both cases.

Throughout the 1990s, Alan Dershowitz wrote four books, including 1996's "Reasonable Doubts: The O.J. Simpson Case and the Criminal Justice System" and 1998's book "Sexual McCarthyism: Clinton, Starr, and the Emerging Constitutional Crisis," reports Britannica. And for years in the 1990s and 2000s, Dershowitz was involved with the media as a frequent guest on shows like "Larry King Live" and "Oprah." Then, around 2005, Alan Dershowitz took on his next unsavory client: Jeffrey Epstein (per Vox). Epstein took a non-prosecution agreement and spent just over a year in jail.

In 2011, Dershowitz embarked on another high-profile case when he joined Julian Assange's legal defense team as a consultant, reports Politico. He was inspired by the high stakes for journalists like Assange, saying that he wanted to protect First Amendment rights in the digital age. Assange founded Wikileaks, an anonymous way to share secret information, including military secrets and humongous data dumps (via EuroNews). Living in Sweden in 2010, Assange was charged with rape and sexual assault, and the case was later dropped.

In 2013, Dershowitz left his teaching post at Harvard Law, where he taught for 50 years.

In 2020, Alan Dershowitz defended former President Donald Trump in a stunning court preceding, where he suggested that it should be basically impossible to impeach Trump (via PBS). Following resounding outrage at the purported idea that a president could legally overthrow a U.S. election, Dershowitz took to Twitter to say he was being misinterpreted by the media and said that the president was not above the law. Then, in 2021, Dershowitz began advising the legal team of Rudy Guiliani, who tried to block courts from accessing his documents from the time of the Trump presidency (via CNN).

Though Dershowitz is known for defending many controversial figures, he may have finally gone too far when he supported Donald Trump's calls to overturn the election. Dershowitz says he lost many, many friends following his support of Trump. Notably, he got into a public fight with actor Larry David at Martha's Vineyard after David called Dershowitz "disgusting," as Newsweek reported. Dershowitz added that many Vineyard establishments have seemingly socially banned him, which he called "McCarthyism." He tackled the subject in his latest book, "Cancel Culture: The Latest Attack on Free Speech and Due Process," which became a New York Times bestseller (via Simon & Schuster).

Dershowitz once again made headlines when he was accused of sexual abuse by a woman from the Jeffrey Epstein case, as reported by Vox. Virginia Roberts Giuffre said that she had sex with Dershowitz at least six times in the early 2000s on Epstein's properties. Another woman said she had sex with Dershowitz one time at Epstein's request. Dershowitz denies both claims.