For a candid interview with renowned US lawyer Professor Alan Dershowitz, Jeremy Fleming travels to Harvard to discover his controversial views on defending terrorists, minimising torture, the International Criminal Court and the future of British judges

If Osama Bin Laden is ever captured, he can take some comfort from the fact that Alan Dershowitz - the Harvard law professor who acted for OJ Simpson, Claus von Bulow, Mohammed Ali and John Lennon - would be prepared to take his instructions.

Prof Dershowitz, a criminal and civil rights law expert, was appointed Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School in 1993.

While acting for a range of celebrities he is also the author of many books and a regular media contributor.

'People expect me to represent an accused terrorist.

Nobody would be surprised if Osama Bin Ladin were captured and he were to call me.

[And] if I were to say yes, nobody's going to fire me.'

Prof Dershowitz says this is a healthy demonstration that the US is not in a new McCarthyite period post-11 September.

'The response within the legal profession has been quite healthy.

For example, there was virtual consensus among the legal profession that the US administration made a mistake when they said that they would try enemy combatants by military commissions instead of by real trials.

On the other hand, the legal community supported the government on changing some of the wiretap rules, making it easier to deal, for example, with disposable cell [mobile] phones.

'There was a gap in the law.

What happened was that terrorists could use a cell phone and throw it away and you'd have to get a new warrant for every cell phone.

It was silly.

You should be able to get a warrant for the person no matter what cell phone he's using.'

But acting for Bin Laden would pose other problems for one of the US's most prominent lawyers: 'It would be hard because I think of myself as one of the targets.

I had to increase my security considerably after 11 September.

I actually hired a consultancy firm - a security firm - to give me advice, because my name had come up in certain intelligence reports, that I was a target.

'So for me the question wouldn't be one of principle.

In principle, I would defend anybody.

For me the question is could I defend somebody who was targeting me, or that I perceived was targeting me - and that would be a hard one.'

The high-profile professor has recently hit the headlines on both sides of the Atlantic with controversial views on torture.

He says: 'I am against torture, I want to see it minimised.

But if we in fact are torturing and will torture, is it worse or better to have that practice done hypocritically, surreptitiously, beneath the surface without accountability? Or is it better to surface it and say if you want to torture, do what the British did 400 or 500 years ago? Come up with a torture warrant where you have to go to a judge and justify the emergency and get the judge to muddy his hands and write that warrant.

'If you are not prepared to authorise it publicly you shouldn't do it.

So my proposal is really a heuristic, designed to force our society to confront the issue of torture.

It's not advocacy of torture.

It's a way of constraining and minimising it.'

One benefit that could flow from this, he says, is that those currently detained at the US military base at Gauntanamo Bay in Cuba could be transferred to US territory.

Something about which he has strong views: 'I do not believe that there should be a no-man's land of law.

Everybody should have a status, either they should be treated as prisoners of war or criminals or non-combatants.

Somehow, we have to figure out what their status is and then the rule of law applies.'

Prof Dershowitz is equally vocal on another bugbear among the international legal community - the US refusal to sign up to the UN-backed International Criminal Court.

'I understand why the US is reluctant [to join], because we've seen how international organisations can sometimes fail to apply the rule of law fairly.

'I think the US has refused for two reasons: because they think that Americans might be treated unfairly; and they think Israelis will be treated unfairly - that they will be subject to unique condemnations and sanctions as they have at the UN for conduct that is no worse, and in many ways better, than the conduct of others.'

But he says: 'My hope is that the US and Israel will join the international court within a decade.

I think that the court is going to have to prove itself, but I think it will do so.'

In relation to the current consultation on the future of the law lords - which could see Britain adopt a US-style supreme court - Prof Dershowitz is wary.

'I think our [supreme court] model has not been a good one for the British to borrow.

Over the past 20 or 30 years it has become yet another politicised institution, which votes more often on the partisan and political leanings of the personnel than the rule of law.'

That's not to say the British judiciary is without its problems.

He adds: 'Britain suffers from another malady, namely the old boy network, which it is finally addressing.

For too many years, US judges were too responsive to public pressures and too responsive to the political dynamics of the country.

Whereas British judges were too unrepresentative.

There were too few women, young people, people of colour, immigrants, too few non-white anglo-saxon protestant males.'

He says that his friends in England 'tell me that that's changing.

So my own view is that Britain should not overreact by adopting the US system.

I think that it should maintain the high level of professionalism in the judiciary, while diversifying.'

From an impressive list of cases, Prof Dershowitz says his work in getting former Soviet refusenik Anatoly Sharansky out of the USSR in 1986 is the one that affected him most personally.

'That was such a difficult case, trying to take on the Soviet legal system, going over there, never having met my client.

Using diplomacy, economics, law, politics and the media.

Every possible vehicle to bring about justice.

I've never cried after winning a case, but when I saw Sharansky walking over the Glienicker bridge from East to West Berlin, I cried like a baby.'

One of the reasons the professor - who was brought up in an orthodox Jewish immigrant household in Manhattan's Lower-East Side - says that case was so important to him is that 'there but for the grace of god go I.

'If his family had made a left turn and mine had made a right turn, then I'd have been in the Soviet Union and he'd have been in America, representing me.'

So what does it take for budding lawyers to become a Dershowitz? 'Don't accept anyone else's job description, decide what you want to do with your life.

There's no such thing as a lawyer for all seasons, specialisation has really set in.

You shouldn't necessarily do what you're best at.

'Money can never be the goal, it has to be an incidental side effect, I've never taken a case just for the money and I'm really very thrilled to be able to say that - because I grew up very poor.'