| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017246)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017246" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2738 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 4.2.12 |
| WC: 191694 |
| As I previously mentioned, my initial assignment as Justice Goldberg's law clerk was to write a |
| memorandum on the possible unconstitutionality of the death penalty. Here is how [ find |
| author] |
| -, in his book |
| _ describes the origins of this lifelong collaborative effort. |
| [Justice Goldberg] called his law clerk Alan Dershowitz into his office and advanced the |
| decidedly immodest idea of using the Constitution to end the death penalty in America. |
| "The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment," Goldberg told |
| Dershowitz. "What could be more cruel than the deliberate decision by the state to take a |
| human life?" |
| Alan Dershowitz immediately understood the impudence of Goldberg's proposal. It was |
| Dershowitz's very first day on the job and the young clerk, already brimming with energy |
| and enthusiasm, was elated by the Justice's proposed agenda. |
| When Goldberg sat down with Dershowitz in the summer of 1963, not even the American |
| Civil Liberties Union believed that capital punishment posed a potential violation of |
| constitutional rights. Dershowitz made this point to Goldberg. "At the time the Eighth |
| Amendment was enacted, the colonists were executing people all over the place. |
| Certainly the framers of the Constitution did not regard the death penalty as |
| unconstitutional." |
| "Therein lies the beauty of our Bill of Rights," Goldberg said. "It's an evolving document. |
| It means something different today than it meant in 1792." |
| In Alan Dershowitz, Goldberg found a kindred spirit and a life story that was in many |
| ways the New York parallel of his own Chicago childhood...Dershowitz had an aversion |
| to capital punishment, which traced back to his childhood. Dershowitz argued against |
| capital punishment as a member of his high school debating team. [I still have a |
| handwritten card from my first high school debate in which I advocate the "abolision of |
| C.P." because "most murderers are products of invironment."] In law school, he wrote a |
| letter to the Prime Minister of Israel... arguing that the death penalty was inappropriate |
| even for Adolf Eichmann. |
| Goldberg's choice of Dershowitz to write his capital punishment opinion was no |
| coincidence. Goldberg passed on the issue during his first year on the bench in part |
| because he did not feel that he had the right clerks. He inherited his first set of clerks from |
| Felix Frankfurter. Though he had high regard for the retiring justice's selections, he didn't |
| feel they were right for the job. |
| They worked together through scholarship and advocacy against the death penalty for the |
| remainder of Goldberg's life. It is difficult to imagine that Goldberg could have found a |
| more willing and able confederate than Alan Dershowitz. |
| 159 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017246 |
|
|
