RECENT INTERVIEW ABOUT A TORT IS NOT A PASTRY
Hansen Alexander's new book, A Tort is Not A Pastry, is quite entertaining. It is filled with witty comments, amusing satires, fact-filled stories of the development of American law, and a contemporary update on the latest major changes in cutting edge areas such as gay rights, family law, pornography on the internet, age discrimination, sexual harassment in the workplace, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The launching of this new book provided an opportunity for Alexander to discuss the writing process, the research, the search for the audience, the challenges at the computer after the facts have been gathered and the editor starts mentioning the unwelcome word deadline.
Question 1: A Tort is Not A Pastry is an inviting and funny title to the non-lawyer. What audience did you have in mind for your book?
Hansen Alexander: The book was written for the general reader as an introduction to American law in the context of the first decade of the 21rst century. It is both a history of the development of the law and what the law now is, a period of dramatic changes in bankruptcy, gay rights, age discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act, pregnancy discrimination, sexual harassment, domestic violence and hate crimes, free speech and pornography on the internet, cost containment measures in personal injury law, a lower bar for when police arrests may take place and a generous increase in the reach of the harmless error doctrine in criminal procedure, closer scrutiny of the death penalty and increased prohibitions on who can be executed in criminal law, a marked decrease in workers who may join unions in labor and employment law, and a further destruction of the equity principles of Brown v. Education in racial discrimination cases.
Question 2: How would you describe the book?
HA: The most entertaining law book ever written. With less minority rules than the Ten Commandments. With more sex than a Bill Clinton date and more exaggerations than an Ann Coulter essay. There are a lot of satires and jokes in the book and, to tell you the truth, I ripped off a lot of comics. I stole jokes from Jackie Mason, from Rumpole's creator John Mortimer, from Bernard Shaw, from Jonathan Swift, and even from my own mother.
Question 3: What was the most important idea you want readers to take away?
HA: American law was created by common sense and compromise. As my mother used to say, "You can't have everything your way in life." Also this is a very pro lawyer book. It has been our work for more than 200 years that has ensured the longest lasting republic in the history of the world. The ability of American law and its lawyers to enforce contracts and reach workable remedies is the envy of every businessman and businesswoman in the world.

And I think readers should know that the biggest difference between lawyers in the past and lawyers today is that lawyers used to go to work in the morning to feed their families. Now, with our outrageous law school loans, we go to work in the morning to feed our banks.
Question 4: What was your research process? Whom did you speak with? Where did this quest take you?
HA: I reread all the landmark cases in every field of law so it was sort of a review of my legal education. I did a lot of research on Family Law, state statutes, because that area of law has changed so dramatically and changes almost every day, depending on what state you live in. I'm happy to say that in the Family Law chapters I was able to incorporate rules from all 50 states and D.C.
I found Elvis Presley's will online and used it to discuss major parts of wills. I read a lot of books on the history of law. Much of it on Roman and Catholic canon and British common law which I used in early versions of the manuscript and later cut. And of course I kept track of the U.S. Supreme Court as it kept handing down landmark cases in age discrimination, Americans with Disabilities Act, and the historic gay rights case Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down all our sodomy laws. At times I wished the Supreme Court would stop deciding cases so I could finish my book. But it refused to cooperate.
Question 5: What were the biggest challenges in writing this book?
HA: There's this very annoying requirement when you're writing a law book that you have to get the law right. In comparison, writing fiction is the easiest thing in life. You just drink a case of beer, sit down at the typewriter, and words come out. When you drink a case of beer and then try to write about the law, the citations come out all wrong for some reason.
The trick in writing about law for a general audience is to talk about the logic of the law without using logic. You have to invoke stories and analogies that have impact. A lot of legal scholars who write for the public at large use Socratic logic as their starting point and then dumb it down from there. Unless you're a genius like Woody Allen you're not going to get your point across. You have to write as if exceptions did not exist. It is hard enough for the average citizen to grasp a legal rule much less equivocating with a ton of exceptions because the very word "exception" invites endless questions and explanations. So I substituted the idea of variety for exception or minority rule. For example, the grounds for divorce are basically the same across the country but there are variations. I used Tennessee as my example, made a joke about Dolly Parton, and then informed the reader that in Tennessee impotence is grounds for divorce. It's a fact a reader will remember. Of course, using this method is a "legal fiction" and a cheap trick, but my books are filled with cheap tricks. And then the lawyer who writes about law for the general reader is up against all the misinformation that has been handed down by the popular press. Stories about the law in newspapers and other mass media are dreadful and usually wrong. Most reporters are clueless about the basic distinction between guilt in criminal law and liability in a civil case, and don't seem too interested in learning that distinction any time soon.
Question 6: What was most rewarding?
HA: To be honest, the most rewarding part of writing this book had nothing to do with writing the book, but actually came when I was correcting the galleys. I received the news that Professor AnnetteGordon-Reed, my friend and my Property Professor at New York Law School, won the Pulizer Prize for History. I couldn't have been happier if I had won the award myself! I was both stunned and thrilled. She e-mailed me from Australia where she had been awakened like 3 or 4 in the morning to tell her she had won. It was late in the day but she was still up, tired buy pleased. Of course, I wouldn't mind if the Pulizer committee read this book, but I don't think they have a category for funny law books.
Question 7: What has the response been, or is it too early to tell?
HA: So far all the readers say that the best parts of the book are my mother's jokes which I find quite irritating because I don't think they are any better than my own. You'd think that she had published the comic novel, The Death of Chauvinism, instead of me. Of course, now that she's dead I can criticize her. In general, you'll notice that in the book I criticize a lot of dead people such as Justice Roger Taney, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, the first Justice Roberts, Henri Matisse, Richard Nixon, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. I've always liked criticizing dead people because I feel I have a better chance of winning an argument with them. One reader said my indexes were easy to use, so I guess that's helpful to know.
Question 8: Who helped you/encouraged you/inspired you?
HA: My mother was a ferocious defender of people's rights. When we got in trouble in school as kids I felt sorry for the school officials who had to listen to my mother's animated lectures about how they had violated her kids' constitutional rights. I wanted to become a Shakespearean actor like my idol Richard Burton and be drunk all the time. But my mother made me become a lawyer. When I was an intern at CBS litigation attorneys Anthony Bonjourno and Cameron Stracher gave me parts of briefs and other documents to write and, I didn't make a total fool of myself, so that gave meconfidence to write about the law.
An early influence was a biography of legendary lawyer Samuel Leibowitz, Courtroom, by Quentin Reynolds. I was engrossed by Leibowitz's defense of the "Scottsboro Boys," Alabama youth falsely convicted of raping a white woman in the 1930s.