William Kunstler Biography Quotes 13 Report mistakes

Early Life
William Moses Kunstler was born in 1919 in the United States and came of age in a century defined by war, social upheaval, and expanding notions of civil rights. He would become one of the country's most recognizable and polarizing defense attorneys, a lawyer who turned the courtroom into a forum for broader arguments about power, dissent, and the meaning of the Constitution. His upbringing in New York and early exposure to American civic life prepared him for a career that would move from conventional practice into the center of the nation's most contentious political trials.

World War II and the Turn to Law
During World War II, Kunstler served in the U.S. Army. Like many veterans, he returned home with sharpened views about authority and individual rights. He resumed civilian life in New York and entered legal practice. At first, his work resembled that of many urban attorneys, but the quickening pace of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s drew him steadily into cases involving protest, free speech, and equality before the law. The South's sit-ins and freedom rides, mass arrests of demonstrators, and the growing legal strategies of movement organizations presented a need for lawyers who would take on unpopular cases. Kunstler answered that call and built a reputation as a fierce advocate for activists and dissidents.

Movement Lawyering and Institutional Building
As the civil rights struggle spread, Kunstler allied with other lawyers committed to using litigation to push the country toward its constitutional promises. In the 1960s he helped establish what became the Center for Constitutional Rights with peers such as Arthur Kinoy and Morton Stavis, an organization dedicated to challenging government abuses and protecting the rights of those at society's margins. He also worked alongside attorneys like Leonard Weinglass, forming partnerships that would carry him through some of the era's defining trials. His practice increasingly blended courtroom advocacy with public education, press engagement, and support for grassroots movements.

The Chicago Seven and a National Stage
Kunstler's national profile soared with the Chicago conspiracy trial arising from protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Representing figures including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner, and connected to the separate, tumultuous proceedings around Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, he confronted Judge Julius Hoffman in a courtroom that became a symbol of generational and political conflict. With Leonard Weinglass as co-counsel, he defended his clients not only on the legal merits but also on the principle that dissent is essential to democracy. The case brought contempt citations and headlines, cementing Kunstler's image as an attorney who would challenge judicial decorum to expose what he saw as systemic bias.

Wounded Knee and the American Indian Movement
In the 1970s, Kunstler represented leaders of the American Indian Movement, including Russell Means and Dennis Banks, after the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. The sprawling litigation tested surveillance practices, prosecutorial boundaries, and the government's historical treatment of Native communities. The proceedings became notorious for revelations of official misconduct, and the dismissals that followed reinforced Kunstler's broader point: that political prosecutions often mirrored the very abuses movements sought to confront. In these cases, as in Chicago, he treated defense work as a vehicle for public reckoning with history and power.

Attica and Prisoners' Rights
After the 1971 Attica prison uprising in New York, Kunstler participated in the defense of inmates and the representation of families who sought accountability for the state's violent retaking of the facility. He joined a team of lawyers advocating for the Attica Brothers, pressing for transparency about the causes of the uprising and the role of officials in the bloodshed. These efforts fit his conviction that constitutional protections must extend to the least popular defendants, and that the line between law and politics often narrows when the government confronts dissent behind prison walls.

Controversial Clients and a Broadened Defense
In the 1980s and 1990s, Kunstler's docket ranged widely and invited intense controversy. He and his law partner Ronald L. Kuby defended clients accused of violent acts against police and alleged political crimes, insisting that even the most reviled defendants deserved zealous representation. In New York, he defended Larry Davis, a Bronx man accused of shooting police officers, securing key acquittals that highlighted questions about police conduct. He represented El Sayyid Nosair after the 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a case that drew national scrutiny. He also stood for Darrell Cabey, one of the young men shot by Bernhard Goetz on a Manhattan subway, in civil litigation that probed vigilantism and race. These cases divided public opinion, but they reflected a consistent through-line in Kunstler's work: the belief that constitutional rights are tested at the margins, and that due process cannot depend on a defendant's popularity.

The Courtroom as Public Forum
Kunstler saw each trial as a narrative, with jurors, judges, and the broader public as audiences who needed to hear the full context behind a charge. He was theatrical, sometimes caustic, and unafraid to risk contempt to preserve a record he thought history would later vindicate. He used the press strategically, gave frequent lectures, and debated critics who accused him of turning law into politics. For Kunstler, the Constitution's guarantees of speech, assembly, and fair process were not abstractions; they were living tools, and the courtroom was a principal arena where they could be defended or diminished.

Writing, Teaching, and Public Voice
Beyond litigation, Kunstler wrote and spoke widely, pressing his case that the justice system reflected broader inequalities and that law could be a lever for social change. Late in his life he published My Life as a Radical Lawyer, a reflection on decades of advocacy and a primer for younger attorneys considering movement-oriented practice. He mentored generations of lawyers who would carry forward his mix of courtroom strategy and public persuasion, among them Ronald L. Kuby, and remained close to colleagues such as Leonard Weinglass, Arthur Kinoy, and Morton Stavis.

Personal Life
Kunstler's personal and professional worlds overlapped. He married fellow civil rights lawyer Margaret Ratner, who shared his commitment to constitutional advocacy and continued that work under her own name as Margaret Ratner Kunstler. They raised daughters, Sarah and Emily, who grew up observing the rigors and controversies of their father's calling and later examined his legacy in their own work. Friends, clients, and peers often remarked on the open-door quality of his practice: activists, reporters, and frightened defendants all found a seat at the table.

Death and Legacy
William Kunstler died in 1995, leaving behind a body of work that spanned the civil rights era, the upheavals of the Vietnam period, and the polarizations of late twentieth-century New York. His legacy remains debated, as he expected it would be. Admirers point to his courage in taking on cases others would not touch, his willingness to confront official overreach, and his shaping of institutions devoted to civil liberties. Critics contend that his defense of highly controversial figures sometimes blurred moral lines. Both views concede that he helped define a tradition of radical lawyering in America. The attorneys and organizations he influenced, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and colleagues like Ronald L. Kuby and Margaret Ratner Kunstler, continued the work of defending movements and individuals. His daughters Sarah and Emily Kunstler later chronicled his life and its contradictions, ensuring that new audiences could assess the choices he made and the legal principles he fought to assert.

Our collection contains 13 quotes who is written by William, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Justice - Freedom - Peace - Mortality.