Alan Dershowitz's book "The Abuse Excuse" looks as if it was put together in a hurry. It could well be titled "The Abuse Excuse and a Bunch of Tenuously Related Columns Thrown Together for the Purpose of Thickening My Book, Publishing My Columns and Making 'The Abuse Excuse' a Household Word Attributed to Me."
The purpose of the book -- executed well when the author stays on topic -- is to attack and unmask America's proliferous excuse-making inside and outside of the criminal justice system and warn of the consequences. Mr. Dershowitz catalogs a representative list of excuse-making and argues, in what could have been an airtight essay, that we are heading into an exculpatory society that poses danger to our constitutional democracy and raises the terrible specter of rampant vigilantism.
The weaknesses of the work appear to result from Mr. Dershowitz's determination to puff up an essay into a book.
Mr. Dershowitz inveighs generally against the fact that "Today, many men and women seem unwilling to take responsibility for their actions. Excuses abound in every sphere of life. . . . " He recommends: "We must stop making excuses and start taking responsibility." Specifically, Mr. Dershowitz attacks what he calls the "abuse excuse," which he defines as "the legal tactic by which criminal defendants claim a history of abuse as an excuse for violent retaliation." Indeed. Mr. Dershowitz did coin the term "abuse excuse," but he hardly invented the concept, as his total lack of attribution to others implies.
From the almost total absence of documentation or even case citations, one would think that Mr. Dershowitz was virtually alone in his concerns. Yet psychiatrist Thomas Szasz and others have been writing for decades on psychiatric excuse-making inside and outside of the courtroom. More recently, scores of columns and books have made similar arguments. Charles Krauthammer writes often on these issues in the Washington Post and the New Republic, and Charles Sykes' book "A Nation of Victims" (1992) makes many of the same points, although he, too, could profit from acknowledging his debt to others.
The lack of documentation is problematic for another reason: It ,, often leaves the reader unable to assess either empirical claims or judgments about the examples presented. For example, Mr. Dershowitz says of the abuse excuse that it "is quickly becoming license to kill and maim" and that "More and more defense lawyers are employing this tactic and more and more jurors are buying it." Mr. Dershowitz also implies, but does not document, that the abuse excuse is increasingly invoked. A law professor, of all people, should be sensitive to the critical importance of providing citations so that facts and interpretations may be independently verified.
There are conceptual confusions throughout the book as well. Under the rubric of the abuse excuse, he addresses both legal means -- battered-women syndrome and black-rage syndrome -- with all kinds of broader rhetorical devices for evading responsibility and justifying actions -- internationally, domestically and politically. While all are self-serving justifications, they cannot be treated neatly as examples of a single concept of "abuse excuse."
Another conceptual muddle involves the insanity defense, clearly example of a legal excuse used to escape responsibility. Mr. Dershowitz does not object to the insanity plea in theory here or in his other writing, but he fails to explain the difference between the abuse excuse and many questionable uses of the insanity plea by defense lawyers. Nowhere does he tell us how to distinguish what he views as authentic excuses from those he dismisses as inauthentic excuses.
In fact, at one point, he says that his central concern is the "excesses of the abuse excuse." Thus, Mr. Dershowitz at times appears not to be writing against the abuse excuse, but rather against the abuse of the abuse excuse!
Finally, nowhere does Mr. Dershowitz provide specific suggestions for what steps should be taken to correct the situation he deplores or how lawyers can ethically represent criminal defendants without invoking abuse excuses. He writes, "The time has come to place limits on testimony about excuses that are so subject to abuses." But what should these limits be, and who should set them? We are left hanging.
Mr. Dershowitz writes, "What I am criticizing is the easy availability of the defense in cases like Menendez and Bobbitt and the foolish jurors who fall for the sob stories told by the lawyers." Is his beef with juries alone or with judges, lawyers and the law as well? While he accepts the legitimacy of the insanity defense, he objects to its application in the Bobbitt case.
As for the role of lawyers, he states, "No one should criticize any defense lawyer who honestly and ethically raises an available defense." Does that mean that the Bobbit defense team acted unethically? He fails to explain what defense lawyers should do.
Mr. Dershowitz, who as the book went to press became counsel to the O. J. Simpson defense team, implies that Mr. Simpson is unlikely to evoke an abuse excuse himself. Regardless, Mr. Dershowitz's argument would make raising such a defense, at a minimum, embarrassing.
If read merely as a series of previously published punchy columns, "The Abuse Excuse" succeeds. As a serious discussion of an assumed trend toward excusing criminal conduct, however, it falls short of what readers have a right to expect from this author. When a serious author purports to write on a serious topic, there can be no excuse for less than thorough analysis and attribution.
Mr. Vatz is a professor at Towson State University. Mr. Weinberg is associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh. They are associate psychology editors of USA Today Magazine and contributing authors to "Discovering the History of Psychiatry."
Title: "The Abuse Excuse: Cop-Outs, Sob Stories and Other Evasions of Responsibility"
Author: Alan M. Dershowitz
Publisher: Little, Brown and Co.
Length, price: 341 pages, $22.95