The Importance of Being Honest: How Lying, Secrecy, and Hypocrisy Collide with Truth in Law

By Steven Lubet

Steven Lubet, who penned Nothing but the Truth: Why Lawyers Don’t, Can’t and Shouldn’t Have to Tell the Whole Truth (NYU Press), brings his signature blend of humor, advocacy, and legal ethics to The Importance of Being Honest, an analysis of how honesty and law play out in current affairs and historical events.  Drawing on original work as well as op-ed pieces and articles that have appeared in The American Lawyer, Chicago Tribune, and many other national publications, Lubet explores the complex aspects of honesty in the legal world.

      The book is full of tales of questionable practices and poor behavior: Wyatt Earp’s shootout with Billy Clanton, Bill Clinton’s decision to lie under oath, Oscar Wilde’s self-destructive perjury in a 1896 libel trial, and the dubious resolution of Justice Scalia’s duck hunting trip with Dick Cheney are only a few of the cases Lubet uses to illustrate that law is a vague and boggy realm where truth, as well as falsehood, is seldom absolute.

      Lubet is currently the Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University in Chicago.

For information on this book and others published by NYU Press, visit www.nyupress.org.