William Kunstler

William Moses Kunstler (July 7, 1919 – September 4, 1995) was an American attorney and civil rights activist, known for defending the Chicago Seven. Kunstler was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the co-founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the "leading gathering place for radical lawyers in the country."

Kunstler's defense of the Chicago Seven from 1969 to 1970 led The New York Times to label him "the country's most controversial and, perhaps, its best-known lawyer". Kunstler is also well known for defending members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Catonsville Nine, Black Panther Party, Weather Underground Organization, the Attica Prison rioters, Meir Kahane assassin El Sayyid Nosair, and the American Indian Movement. He also won a de facto segregation case regarding the District of Columbia's public schools and "disinterred, singlehandedly" the concept of federal criminal removal jurisdiction in the 1960s. Kunstler refused to defend right-wing groups, such as the Minutemen, on the grounds that "I only defend those whose goals I share. I'm not a lawyer for hire. I only defend those I love."

He was a polarizing figure; many on the right wished to see him disbarred, while many on the left admired him as a "symbol of a certain kind of radical lawyer." Even some other civil rights lawyers regarded Kunstler as a "publicity hound and a hit-and-run lawyer" who "brings cases on Page 1 and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund wins them on Page 68." Legal writer Sidney Zion quipped that Kunstler was "one of the few lawyers in town who knows how to talk to the press. His stories always check out and he's not afraid to talk to you, and he's got credibility—although you've got to ask sometimes, 'Bill, is it really true?'"

Kunstler was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Frances Mandelbaum and Monroe Bradford Kunstler, a physician. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School. After high school, he attended Yale University, where he majored in French and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1941. He then went on to attend Columbia Law School from which he graduated in 1948. While at Yale, Kunstler was an avid poet and represented Yale in the Glascock Prize competition at Mount Holyoke College.

Rejected twice by the United States Navy, Kunstler served in the U.S. Army during World War II in the Pacific theater. He volunteered for cryptography and served in New Guinea. He rose to the rank of major and received the Bronze Star. While in the army, he was noted for his theatrical portrayals in the Fort Monmouth Dramatic Association.

After his discharge from the Army, Kuntsler hoped to become a writer. However, he ultimately attended law school, probably at the encouragement of his younger brother, who hoped they would go into practice together. His classmates at Columbia included Constance Baker Motley, Roy Cohn, and his future law partner Arthur Kinoy. In 1948, he was admitted to the bar in New York and began practicing law. Kunstler went through R.H. Macy's executive training program in the late 1940s and practiced family and small-business law in the 1950s, before entering civil-rights litigation in the 1960s. He was an associate professor of law at New York Law School (1950–1951).

Kunstler won honorable mention for the National Legal Aid Association's press award in 1957 for his series of radio broadcasts on WNEW, The Law on Trial. At WNEW, Kunstler also conducted interviews on controversial topics, such as the Alger Hiss case, on a program called Counterpoint.

Kunstler began to garner sustained media attention in 1957, when he unsuccessfully defended the journalist William Worthy. A correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American, Worthy was one of 42 Americans who had their passports seized after violating the State Department's travel ban on Communist China (after attending a Communist youth conference in Moscow). Kunstler refused a State Department compromise, which would have returned Worthy's passport if he agreed to cease visiting Communist countries, a condition that Worthy considered unconstitutional.