Sen. Kavanagh publishes book on state legislatures for ASU | Arizona Capitol Times

Key Points:

• Sen. John Kavanagh recently published a book about state legislatures 

• Book was written for lawmakers, lobbyists, reporters and others interested in the Arizona Legislature

• Lawmaker will use the book to teach college course at Arizona State University

Sen. John Kavanagh has drawn upon his legislative experience and academic background to write a textbook-style guide to the state Legislature.

“State Legislatures: An Owner’s Manual” covers the history and structure of state legislatures, how bills are drafted and laws are made, legislative ethics rules, the importance of supporting a position with logic and facts, and several other topics.

The Fountain Hills Republican, who has a Ph.D. in criminal justice from Rutgers University and was also a police officer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, has taught criminal justice courses for 25 years at Arizona State University and Scottsdale Community College. 

He has served in the state Legislature for almost 20 years.

Kavanagh decided to write the book after he was approved to teach a course on state legislatures at ASU. He realized while preparing for the course that there was no introductory textbook on the topic and decided to make one himself.

“I would say this is not a typical dry textbook presentation,” he said. “It’s written like I’m giving lectures. So it’s very smooth flowing, easy reading. I have a lot of … comical sides or just real world observations.”

Kavanagh connected with former Democratic legislator Steve Farley, who he hired to illustrate the book’s cover.

Farley, who’s been an artist for nearly 30 years, has designed murals in Tucson and also has had his work displayed at the Senate.

The two lawmakers developed a relationship from the years they served in the Legislature, despite working on different sides of the aisle. 

“I served during a time which seems very far away now, but Democrats and Republicans got along,” said Farley, who served in the House for six years before moving to the Senate for another six years. “So we worked together on a lot of things, and with the stuff we didn’t agree on, we fought.”

There wasn’t much disagreement during this process, as Kavanagh admired Farley’s graphic design work and even recruited him to design a cover for his wife’s book.

It took Kavanagh a year and a half to finish the book, which was released a couple of weeks ago on Amazon, he said.

“I would begin researching one thing and, as you’re researching that, some other issue comes up that you then say ‘I have to cover,’” he said. “So it kind of takes you all over the place.”

Although Kavanagh is a veteran legislator, he was still surprised by some of the information he uncovered from his research.

For example, he originally thought general writing rules and using plain language applied to crafting laws.

“Laws have to be very precise and technically written, and there are also rules of construction, of where you place commas and ‘ands,’ and a lot of court rulings on the way different words are interpreted in relation to other words,” he said.

Because of the level of research conducted, a book that was destined to be about 200 pages grew to nearly 400 pages.

The chapters are broken down to cover different topics, including people who inhabit the legislature, such as lawmakers, lobbyists and reporters, external threats to legislative authority, and logical fallacies encountered during legislative debates.

It also includes a touch of humor.

“Supporters call state legislatures the “laboratories of democracy,” but detractors disparagingly refer to them as “meth labs,” Kavanagh wrote in the book’s introduction. “In reality, legislatures can be perceived as either, depending on the political views of the person passing judgment and the ideological slant of the legislature being judged.”