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Law review note topic: All lies are not created equal according to St. Augustine

By S. COTUS

Since some of my readers are looking for law review article or note topics, I figured I would throw this out there.  Some time ago, I covered the ?legal ethical? issue of lying here and here and here,  Now here is the general ethical view of lying. 

There are lots of lies in the legal profession.  Law students lie.  Professors lie.  I mean, come on, every time a law professor pretends to be interested in the legal theories of a hot 1L, is he really telling the truth?  Employers lie. Judges lie.  Government lawyers lie.  Oh, and litigants lie, too.  So, how can we distinguish between bad lies (told by litigants) and good lies (like those told by employers deciding what associates to hire).

Let's Ask St. Augustine. Or rather his book ?Retractions.?  He differentiated between opinions and lies. He also differentiated between parody and lies.  This guy likely never saw an edition of Hustler, but he still understood these issues.

Wikipedia made it into bullet points, but I independently verified that his ranking of lies is fairly faithful.

1. Lies in religious teaching; [are worse than]
2. Lies that harm others and help no one; [are worse than]
3. Lies that harm others and help someone;  [are worse than]
4. Lies told for the pleasure of lying; [are worse than]
5. Lies told to "please others in smooth discourse"; [are worse than]
6. Lies that harm no one and that help someone; [are worse than]
7. Lies that harm no one and that save someone's life; [are worse than]
8. Lies that harm no one and that save someone's "purity."

Since we all like to get so self-righteous about accusing each other of ?lying? (and damn near sent an ex-partner at Dechert to jail ? a sure insult to our republic) perhaps someone should try and square St. Augustine's view with the current state of the law.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on September 01, 2008 (boomark / email).