I had the opportunity to interview Michael Trachtman about his new book on the United States' highest court, The Supremes' Greatest Hits: The 34 Supreme Court Cases That Most Directly Affect Your Life. This was a two-part interview, initially through e-mail and then a follow-up telephone interview.
It is a wonderfully crafted book, how did you come up with the idea?
The general idea of writing a book on the Supreme Court's most significant decisions was suggested to me by John Boswell, a literary agent and manager in NYC with whom I had worked on a prior book. There has been a vast amount of media attention devoted to recent Supreme Court nominations and decisions, and John felt that the public needed a book, written in language non-lawyers could understand and enjoy, that would explain what the brouhaha was really all about.
In refining just what this book should be, my goal was to bring the topic to the level of each individual, and to help readers understand what the Supreme Court's rulings mean to them in their everyday lives - hence the subtitle, The 34 Cases That Most Affect Your Daily Life. I wanted to get away from academic analyses and political critiques, and I wanted to get beyond abortion, where the media usually focuses virtually to the exclusion of everything else. There's so much more that the Supreme Court faces, and about which concerned citizens need to be informed in an unbiased way - separation of church and state, affirmative action, protecting rights of privacy, free speech, the implications of the Internet, the rights of the accused, and balancing personal freedom versus national security. I wanted to equip people with the know-how to get past the slickly-produced, interest group-driven television ads and sound bites that seem to dominate our political process so they can reach their own conclusions, based on what's most important to them and their families.
This is not your first foray into the publishing world, but this is the first book aimed at the general public. Did you find it hard to 'un-learn' the legal style and write for the man in the street?
In my legal career, I represent entrepreneurs and business people trying to stay out, or get out, of legal trouble. The problem these people have is that, on the one hand, it remains true that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but on the other hand it's very hard for non-lawyers to understand the laws with which they must comply. It's like being forced to play a game with a rule book you can't understand. I wrote my prior book in the late 1980s in the hope of helping business people comprehend what was expected of them, and how to use the rules to their advantage. To do that, I had to learn to write in a way that non-lawyers could understand, and I found it very, very difficult to turn off the lawyer aspect of my personality. Ultimately, it clicked - I discovered that to write in this way, you literally have to master the skill of assuming a different persona. Over the years I've worked to maintain that skill by writing literally dozens of articles for various publications, and for my law firm and consulting firm websites.
Article comments
1 - GL Hauptfleisch
Solid, substantive interview- thanks.