In her Aug. 4 op-ed, “Your actions are your morality,” my former student Molly Roberts mischaracterized my “personal specialty” as defending “accused rapists and wife-killers.” This is demonstrably false. I have represented battered women, institutionalized women, harassed women, abandoned women, female activists and prisoners of conscience, falsely accused women and more. Many of these cases were done on a pro bono basis, as I do half of my cases without fee.

Over the course of my 55-year career involving about 250 cases, I have also represented a small handful of men accused of assaulting or killing women. Several of these men were falsely accused and ultimately vindicated. Two of them were on death row, and I did their cases pro bono as well. 

Ms. Roberts failed to ask me about my actual career because the truth would have undercut her false narrative. The essence of morality is truthfulness, not only for lawyers but also for journalists.

Alan M. Dershowitz, Cambridge, Mass.

The writer is the Felix Frankfurter professor
of law emeritus at Harvard University.