Turpitude, moral and otherwise

One of the charges brought against the tenured professor that Albright College wants to fire for exposing their president's misstated credentials, is "moral turpitude."

When we were selling our publishing business to Pearson just over three years ago, the 70-page purchase contract prepared by Pearson included a "moral turpitude" provision, that could invalidate the contract.

My lawyer, twinkle in eye, asked Pearson's four-person law team, all sitting around their conference table, just what "moral turpitude" was. They hemmed and hawed a lot, and finally called a recess while they went off to their law library to try to find out.

As my lawyer well knew (he represented Cesar Chavez for years), there is no agreed-upon meaning for this vague concept, yet it is often invoked to try to invalidate contracts.

Pearson's lawyers returned a while later and, without further comment, said they were agreeable to removing the moral turpitude clause.

During the break, we were reflecting on what other kinds of turpitude you might want to write into an agreement. How about sartorial turpitude (e.g., wearing brown shoes with a blue suit); culinary turpitude (ketchup on the cottage cheese), etc.