"Abuse Excuse"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sat, 7 Aug 1999, James E. Clapp wrote:

> I have long been curious to know whether Alan M. Dershowitz coined this or
> was merely using a phrase that had been around a while when he wrote his
> book _The Abuse Excuse_ [full title: _The Abuse Excuse And Other Cop-outs,
> Sob Stories, and Evasions of Responsibility_] (Little, Brown, 1994).

It seems pretty clear from a Nexis search that Dershowitz coined the term.
The earliest hit is in a transcript of CBS This Morning, Jan. 14, 1994, in
which Dershowitz used _abuse excuse_ while discussing the Menendez case.


Fred R. Shapiro                             Coeditor (with Jane Garry)
Associate Librarian for Public Services     TRIAL AND ERROR: AN OXFORD
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            ANTHOLOGY OF LEGAL STORIES
Yale Law School                             Oxford University Press, 1998
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               ISBN 0-19-509547-2