[2] 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 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.

[11] Judge Leon Hendrick in Hinds County refused Kunstler's motion to cancel the mass appearance (involving hundreds of miles of travel) of all 187 convicted riders.

[19] In 1964, Kunstler defended a group of four accused of kidnapping a white couple, and succeeded in getting the alleged weapons thrown out as evidence, as they could not be positively identified as those used.

[20] That year, he also challenged Mississippi's unpledged elector law and racial segregation in primary elections; he also defended three members of the Blood Brothers, a Harlem gang, charged with murder.

[21][22] Kunstler went to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 during the demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Dr. Robert B. Hayling, which put added pressure on Congress to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[29] Kunstler's other notable clients include: Salvador Agron, H. Rap Brown,[30][31][32][33] Lenny Bruce,[34] Stokely Carmichael,[2] the Catonsville Nine,[35] Angela Davis, Larry Davis, Gregory Lee Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr.,[2] Gary McGivern, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,[36] Filiberto Ojeda Rios, Assata Shakur, Lemuel Smith,[37] Morton Sobell,[38] Wayne Williams, and Michael X.

[43] Kunstler also sparred with Judge Julius Hoffman, on one occasion remarking (with respect to the number of federal marshals): "this courtroom has the appearance of an armed camp.

[46] The Seventh Circuit overturned all the convictions on November 21, 1972, due to Hoffman's refusal to let defense lawyers question the prospective jurors on racial and cultural biases; the Justice Department did not retry the case.

Shortly after the 1968 Democratic Convention, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Dave Dellinger, and Robert Greenblatt received subpoenas to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

On the opening day of the HUAC hearings, the subpoenaed men and their lawyers, including Kunstler and Kennedy, staged a “stand-in” to protest the investigations.

Kunstler arrived in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, on March 4, 1973, to draw up the demands of the American Indian Movement (AIM) members involved in the Wounded Knee incident.

[49] Kunstler objected to the heavy trial security on the grounds that it could prejudice the jury and Judge Fred J. Nichol agreed to ease measures.

[51] In 1975, Kunstler defended AIM members Robert Robideau and Darrelle Butler in the slaying of two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, not far from the site of the Wounded Knee incident.

[53] At the trial in 1976, Kunstler subpoenaed prominent government officials to testify about the existence of a Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) against Native American activists.

[61] In June, Kunstler and Barbara Handshu, representing another inmate at Attica, Mariano Gonzales, asked for a new hearing on the role of FBI informant Mary Jo Cook.

The two took on controversial civil-rights and criminal cases, including cases where they represented Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, head of the Egyptian-based terrorist group Gama'a al-Islamiyah, responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Colin Ferguson, the man responsible for the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooting, who would later reject Kuby and Kunstler's legal counsel and choose to represent himself at trial; Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, accused of plotting to murder Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam; Glenn Harris, a New York City public-school teacher who absconded with a 15-year-old girl for two months; Nico Minardos, a flamboyant actor indicted by Rudy Giuliani for conspiracy to ship arms to Iran; Darrell Cabey, one of the persons shot by Bernard Goetz; and associates of the Gambino crime family.

[65] Kunstler represented a number of convicted mafiosi during his career, claiming "they were victims of government persecution",[66] and said to have "never made a nickel on an OC [organized crime] case".

Patriarca, Nicholas L. Bianco,[68] John Gotti, and Louis Ferrante, who claimed in his memoir, Unlocked: the Life and Crimes of a Mafia Insider, that Kunstler "took a hundred grand off me.

Layton disguised himself as a defector and initiated the gunfire on November 18 against Ryan and his secretary and accompanying journalists, following which Jim Jones ordered and then enforced the deaths of more than 900 people, almost one-third of them children, as a purported act of revolution.

In 1979, Kunstler represented Marvin Barnes, an ABA and NBA basketball player, with past legal troubles and league discipline problems.

During the 1994–95 television season, Kunstler starred as himself in an episode of Law & Order titled "White Rabbit", defending a woman charged with complicity in the 1971 murder of a policeman during the robbery of an armored car; the plot was based on the real-life story of Katherine Ann Power, who turned herself in to authorities in 1993.

In his last major public appearance, at the commencement ceremonies for the University at Buffalo's School of Architecture and Planning, Kunstler lambasted the death penalty, saying: "We have become the charnel house of the Western world with reference to executions; the next closest to us is the Republic of South Africa."

from the witness stand, placing a Viet Cong flag on the defense table, and wearing a black armband to commemorate the war dead.