About

Steven Lubet is the Edna B. and Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law Emeritus and Director Emeritus of the Bartlit Center on Trial Advocacy at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He has taught courses on Legal Ethics, Trial Advocacy, Lawyer Memoirs, Pretrial Litigation, and Narrative Structures. He is the author of seventeen books and hundreds of articles covering topics such as legal ethics, judicial ethics, law practice, litigation, abolitionism, legal history, international criminal law, dispute resolution, and legal education. His recent work includes the book The Trials of Rasmea Odeh: How a Palestinian Guerrilla Gained and Lost U.S. Citizenship, published in 2021, and The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry, published in 2015, which explores the stories of African-American abolitionists involved in John Brown’s efforts to end slavery.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Political Science
• History
• Environmental ethics
• Medicine
• Clinical psychology
• Art
• Psychotherapist
• Pathology
• Archaeology
• Law
• Psychology
• Genealogy
• Ethnology
• Literature
• Psychiatry

Selected publications

• The Importance of Being Honest

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-03-17

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Popular author Steven Lubet brings his signature blend of humor, advocacy, and legal ethics to The Importance of Being Honest , an incisive 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 , the Chicago Tribune , and many other national publications, Lubet explores the complex aspects of honesty in the legal world. The Importance of Being Honest is full of tales of questionable practices and poor behavior, chosen because negative examples are much richer, and often more remarkable, in their ultimate lessons. Wyatt Earp’s shootout with Billy Clanton, Bill Clinton’s disastrous 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 use to illustrate that law is a vague and boggy realm where truth, and falsehood, is seldom absolute. With his lively, insightful, and sometimes hilarious prose, Lubet takes readers on a tour of the law in our everyday lives, and forces us to rethink how we really feel about honesty and truth.

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter five. Liberty Valance Truth or Justice

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter two. Edgardo Mortara: Forbidden Truths

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter seven. Sheila McGough The Impossibility of the Whole Truth

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Index

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  paratext1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Nothing but the Truth

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-03-17

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Lubet's Nothing But The Truth presents a novel and engaging analysis of the role of storytelling in trial advocacy. The best lawyers are storytellers, he explains, who take the raw and disjointed observations of witnesses and transform them into coherent and persuasive narratives. Critics of the adversary system, of course, have little patience for storytelling, regarding trial lawyers as flimflam artists who use sly means and cunning rhetoric to befuddle witnesses and bamboozle juries. Why not simply allow the witnesses to speak their minds, without the distorting influence of lawyers' stratagems and feints? But Lubet demonstrates that the craft of lawyer storytelling is a legitimate technique for determining the truth andnot at all coincidentallyfor providing the best defense for the attorney's client. Storytelling accomplishes three important purposes at trial. It helps to establish a "theory of the case," which is a plausible and reasonable explanation of the underlying events, presented in the light most favorable to the attorney's client. Storytelling also develops the "trial theme," which is the lawyer's way of adding moral force to the desired outcome. Most importantly, storytelling provides a coherent "story frame," which organizes all of the events, transactions, and other surrounding facts into an easily understandable narrative context. As with all powerful tools, storytelling may be misused to ill purposes. Therefore, as Lubet explains, lawyers do not have carte blanche to tell whatever stories they choose. It is a creative process to be sure, but every story must ultimately be based on "nothing but the truth." There is no room for lying. On the other hand, it is obvious that trial lawyers never tell "the whole truth," since life and experience are boundless and therefore not fully describable. No lawyer or court of law can ever get at the whole truth, but the attorney who effectively employs the techniques of storytelling will do the best job of sorting out competing claims and facts, thereby helping the court arrive at a decision that serves the goals of accuracy and justice. To illustrate the various challenges, benefits, and complexities of storytelling, Lubet elaborates the stories of six different trials. Some of the cases are real, including John Brown and Wyatt Earp, while some are fictional, including Atticus Finch and Liberty Valance. In each chapter, the emphasis is on the narrative itself, emphasizing the trial's rich context of facts and personalities. The overall conclusion, as Lubet puts it, is that "purposive storytelling provides a necessary dimension to our adversary system of justice."

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Introduction: Storytelling Lawyers

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Index

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-24

  paratext1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter three. John Brown: Political Truth and Consequences

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Chapter six. Atticus Finch: Race, Class, Gender, and Truth

  New York University Press eBooks · 2022-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Robert P. Burns

  Northwestern University

  10 shared

• Morris Czackes

  Northwestern University

  5 shared

• James H. Seckinger

  4 shared

• Cynthia Tape

  2 shared

• John T. Baker

  2 shared

• Richard Moberly

  Harvard University Press

  2 shared

• David Tüller

  Triemli Hospital

  2 shared

• Terre Rushton

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Judicial Conduct and Ethics (with James Alfini, Charles Geyh…
• Society of Midland Authors Biography Award (finalist for Joh…
• Langum Prize for American Legal History (honorable mention f…
• Modern Trial Advocacy (6th ed., 2020, with JC Lore)