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imprisoned.” Several years later I was being interviewed on a television show and the host asked me what my biggest fee had been. He thought I would mention the Michael Milken or Leona Helmsley cases, but instead I said it was in the Sharansky case. He expressed surprise saying that he didn’t know Sharansky had any money. I said he did not but that when he put his arms around me and gave me that hug and whispered those words, that was the biggest fee I ever earned.

Another “fee” for my work was the opportunity to speak in Carnegie Hall on behalf of Vaclav Havel and other dissident artists in 1991. Several Americans who had fought for the human rights of censored artists were invited to read from and discuss works banned by repressive regimes. I had been part of a team of lawyers assembled to help Havel and other Czeck dissidents get out of prison in the 1970s. The American readers included Garrison Keillor, Marvin Hamlisch, Peter Ustinov, William Warfield, Martin Garbus, and Maurice Sendak. I was honored to be included among them. My mother loved showing her friends the Carnegie Hall program, with my name listed as a “performer.” She would tell them a variation of the old joke: A man asks a musician carrying a violin case, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? My mother’s answer: “Practice, practice, practice law, like my son.”

My next encounter with Havel took place in Jerusalem during the celebration of Israel’s 60th birthday. Havel, Sharansky and I were on a panel together discussing human rights. When it was over we got onto the same elevator. Remarkably, Mickael Gorbachev was also on the elevator. (I knew it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: “Havel, Sharansky, Gorbachev and Dershowitz get into an elevator.”) Gorbachev turned to me and said, “You’re the big shot lawyer who tried to get these people out of prison. You did a good job, but I did a better job. I’m the one who got them out.” We all laughed and Havel turned to Gorbachev and asked, “Why didn’t you get us out sooner?” Gorbachev replied, “I’m not that good.”

The struggle against real Apartheid

My interest in South Africa Apartheid began while I was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal in 1961. An article was submitted on the legal structure of the apartheid system in the country. At that time very little was known about the legal aspects of this highly regulated practice, and this lengthy draft laid it all out. It was my job to edit it so as to make it comprehensible to an American audience. It was shocking to me that only a few decades after the Nuremburg Laws in Nazi Germany, a “civilized” country, with a British and Dutch heritage, could construct a system of laws based on overt racism and discrimination, under which racial classifications determined who could vote, hold certain jobs, live in certain areas, be treated in good hospitals, attend public events, enroll in schools and hold office. I was determined to help dismantle the system of apartheid and actively joined in the campaign against it. But there were limits to what I was prepared to do, and these limits brought me into conflict with some of the most ardent anti-apartheid activists. Most particularly, I was not willing to support the “blacklisting” or artists

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