"I always tell everybody what I'm doing. But there's certainly no permission," King says. "You don't have to get permission."

Universally, professors say they have not been concerned about issues of conflict of interest between their testimony and their work at the University.

"Academics have academic freedom," King says. "It's not really the kind of thing you would think of, imposing more rules on academics."

Dershowitz says he could imagine a problem arising if a professor said something which could hurt the University of his students.

"But I think professors are pretty sensitive to that," Dershowitz says. Dershowitz himself refuses to be hired as an expert witness.

"There is an enormous difference between defending someone in court and [acting as] a witness for hire," he says. "It's totally contradictory. The lawyer is an advocate. The witness is a sworn truth-teller."

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says it's important that faculty members who testify do so without implying that they are speaking as representatives of the University.

"I agree with President Lowell's position which was that professors could make authoritative statements in their field outside the University, but they should not carry the weight of a Harvard professorship when making pronouncements," Knowles says.

Why Testify?

Despite possible conflicts, Assistant Professor of Psychology Michelle Leichtman, says there are reasons professors should testify.

"I think it is very important that we share what we learn in our laboratories with the courts, once the information is 'ripe' enough to be digested by the legal system," she says.

Professors have chosen to testify for a variety of reasons, ranging from curiosity about the legal system to a feeling of professional responsibility.

Mansfield says he testified in the Colorado case because he was interested in the politicization of the courts.

"This seemed to me to be a rank and flagrant example of that. Here was an actual vote of the people being overturned, which made the winners into losers and the losers into winners," Mansfield says. "Partly I also reacted to the problem of finding anyone who would do anything to get gay activists upset. My experience amply showed why people hesitate."

When Mansfield was subsequently asked to testify in a similar case in Cincinnati he refused. "I wouldn't be in a hurry to do it again," he says. "I didn't want to get identified with the gay rights issue."

King says he turned down many requests to testify before finally agreeing to work on a redistricting case for the first time.

"I had exactly the instinct...I'm an academic. I don't do this," he says. "The first person who convinced me to do this said, 'You're the one who's written all the these articles. You have a personal responsibility.'"

But testifying has proved profitable for King. Through his work on one case, a foundation which had collected $3.5 million worth of electoral data donated the information to the Government Department Data Center followed by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

"It opened up a lot of doors. It made a lot of information available," he says. "It also benefited my research."