Ranging over a wide array of cases, Andrew Stark draws on legal, moral and political thought - as well as the rhetoric of office-holders and the commentary of journalists - to analyse several decades of debate over conflict of interest in American public life.

In exploring the consequences of these twin migrations - the passage of "conflict " from a subjective to an objective understanding, the transformation of "interest" from an objective to a subjective conception - the author aims to make our debates over public ethics less vexatious for officials and more lucid for citizens.