What Is The Difference Between The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth

[Midas Souza]

Theabove phrase comes from the wording of the oath which is used in Courts and Tribunals every day. But what does it mean? It is actually a carefully constructed phrase which forbids any kind of deception when a person gives evidence. It means that the witness is swearing to tell:

The famous wording of the oath is clearly appropriate for use in Courts, because it is absolutely comprehensive and watertight. But it is not necessarily the right way to operate in our day to day lives. We do not always have a duty to tell the whole truth. We are not always under a duty to say all that we know, or all that is on our minds. To do so would sometimes be very unwise. Note the approach that Nehemiah took:

That objective means that the Court must insist on total, unlimited frankness and for nothing at all to be held back. Justice is at stake. However, that is not always the case in our day to day lives, where we may be entitled to withhold certain facts, provided that doing so does not amount to a lie.

After hearing the line anew, I started thinking about the concepts of truth and honesty. It occurred to me that this is a subject of interest to many of us, especially in the justice system. In fact, there is a myriad of expressions surrounding these concepts, as there are for the flip side, dishonesty.

Swearing on one bible is a very solemn occasion. If you do not tell the truth after swearing on even a single bible, then you are destined to be banished to a hotter climate in the netherworld. But which nefarious place can you possibly be sentenced to if you lie after swearing on a stack of bibles? The Bates Motel?

Then there is the guy who swears up and down. When I hear this witness affirming his honesty, I imagine him in front of a judge and jury, taking a bible into his hands and uttering the oath while doing five deep squats. Now, who can discredit this individual?

Some folks view honesty from different elevations. They may be on the level. Others may be even more honest, on a higher level, being aboveboard. I actually respect these people, as they likely put their cards on the table.

April 30 was selected rather than April 1, which would not have been the best choice. The date was also chosen because it coincides with the first inauguration of George Washington. To keep myself honest, I fact-checked this date with the paragon of accuracy, Siri. To tell the whole truth, Siri referred me to Wikipedia.)

However fallible our instinct for truth (or falsehood) may be, and however deeply it may be critiqued from a philosophical perspective, we want to persuade you that seeking the truth is an indispensable guide and aim in conversations with others. In fact, we ultimately want to persuade you that seeking not just the truth but the whole truth together is the only foundation upon which meaningful conversation on important topics can proceed and is the only framework within which the chances for lasting peaceful co-existence can be pursued.

Having acknowledged the substantial influence of context and personal experience on all of our perspectives about the truth, we should not, then, fall off the horse on the other side, and go too far in the direction of doubting the knowability of reality, or overestimating the difficulty of either discerning the truth itself or of finding agreement on what we think the truth (of whatever it is we may be discussing) might be.

The chances of anyone individually, and all of us collectively, coming to a better understanding of the actual truth of the matter seems certain to increase if we actually engage in conversations where the search for the truth is our consciously shared purpose.

It seems likely that, at the very least, the chances of basing our final collective decision on a more accurate understanding of reality will be increased if the conversations we have on the way there are, in fact, focused on helping each other to obtain that more truthful understanding. And, surely, that is a good thing. Better, surely, to make laws about marriage or climate change or guns or vaccinations based on the truth (as clearly and accurately as we can understand it), rather than on misunderstandings of reality. Again, while we may not ultimately agree on what that truth is, the chances of anyone individually, and all of us collectively, coming to a better understanding of the actual truth of the matter seems certain to increase if we actually engage in conversations where the search for the truth is our consciously shared purpose.

There is another important benefit to shifting our focus away from our fraught feelings and judgments about each other (ad hominem) and towards whole truth-seeking together (ad veritatem). It may actually help us reassess those negative feelings and judgment.

To reiterate an earlier warning about truth and persuasion: If individuals abstain from participating in public conversations, the contest will only include biased institutions (large formal groups of people) that have the means to commandeer or purchase our attention, limiting the viewpoints that might yield the whole truth. For this reason, we believe that seeking the truth together should become a normal social responsibility for all citizens. Whatever our worldview, we need to believe in our hearts that the greater truth emerges from open conversations between people that disagree.

Is it better to relocate for family or establish roots in a community? Fidelity to a community can come from weighing spiritual obligations, the benefits of community attachment, and family connections.

The other organization also says its membership primarily is postmasters, which actually is one of the few facts espoused by that organization. So, here is the truth: NAPS membership is approximately 27,000 EAS employees representing over 500 positions in the postal management ranks. Interestingly, approximately 5,000 postmasters also are NAPS members, meaning NAPS has nearly as many active postmaster members as that other organization!

That other organization even sided with the Postal Service against NAPS in our lawsuit! The victory awarded NAPS in its lawsuit will benefit all EAS employees, including postmasters, because NAPS now represents postmasters in pay and benefits consultations with the USPS. Yes, other organization, that also is more truth.

Really? Well, here is more truth: As a NAPS member, you would pay nothing. That other group seems to not understand how that is possible; they come up with all types of fake scenarios about what your cost really would be as a NAPS member.

Of course, our primary focus always has been to educate and train our members how to stay out of trouble. But if, by some chance, something adverse should happen to you as an EAS employee, we will be there with world-class representation.

NAPS is well prepared to meet the challenges of the future and meet them we will! Your resident officers at NAPS Headquarters, your Executive Board members across our country and your local branch leaders are committed to maintaining the standard of effective representation and excellence that has been the hallmark of NAPS.

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Environmental justice advocates often argue that environmental hazards and their health effects vary by neighborhood, income, and race. To assess these patterns and advance preventive policy, their colleagues in the research world often use complex and methodologically sophisticated statistical and geospatial techniques. One way to bridge the gap between the technical work and the expert knowledge of local residents is through community-based participatory research strategies. We document how an environmental justice screening method was coupled with "ground-truthing"-a project in which community members worked with researchers to collect data across six Los Angeles neighborhoods-which demonstrated the clustering of potentially hazardous facilities, high levels of air pollution, and elevated health risks. We discuss recommendations and implications for future research and collaborations between researchers and community-based organizations.

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."

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