Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (13 page)

Rule XII. Rule XI does not apply to members of organized crime, drug dealers, career criminals or potential informers.

Rule XIII. Nobody really wants justice. (80–81)

Dershowitz labels these rule-bending, end-justifies-the-means proceedings as “benign corruption” (80). But complicity in such a system cannot help but make those outside the law cynical and those inside the law feel compromised and conflicted. As Calvin Woodard, Woodard Professor Emeritus of Law at University of Virginia, says, “Scout has questions and doubts about the law that even Atticus—the consummate man of law—cannot adequately explain” (153).

Given these images and the amorphous ethics of the law, it is no wonder that attorneys turn Atticus Finch into an icon. Who would not wish to be aligned with a man who instructs the jury,

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. (
TKAM
233)

But Dershowitz also claims that although lawyers tend to be hero-worshippers, they need to avoid hero-worshipping, even of attorneys like Clarence Darrow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hugo Black, and William O. Douglas (3). Instead, lawyers should emulate admirable traits of individual attorneys but recognize that “even singular characteristics will rarely be without flaws” (9). He summarizes, “There is no perfect justice, just as there are no absolutes in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it” (9).

The adulation of Atticus Finch has blinded some readers to the complexity of his character. Some of that adulation undoubtedly stems from the point of view of the novel, a young child telling the story of her father, a story written by a daughter—Harper Lee—who adored her own attorney father. Atticus himself confronts the lack of perfect justice: in a perfect world, an innocent client would be freed. Atticus also confronts the problem of no absolutes: in a world of absolutes, he would not have to impugn the character of a young woman whose father abuses her. Perfect injustice would have been for Tom Robinson not to have had his point of view heard, not to have had the ability to appeal, not to have had good representation. Calpurnia recognizes the law's complexity and unpredictability when she tells a friend, “First thing you learn when you're in a lawin' family is that there ain't any definite answers to anything” (
TKAM
237).

Dershowitz further suggests that obsession over the conflict between legal ethics, which require legal advocacy on behalf of both innocent and guilty clients, and personal morality, which requires decency and honesty in all dealings, is actually a mark of a good lawyer. In fact, he says,

there are no perfect resolutions to these and other conflicts. An effective lawyer must do everything on behalf of his client that is not forbidden by the law or the rules of the legal profession. But a good person should always be uncomfortable about doing anything that does not meet his or her personal standards of morality. . . . If you are a decent and thinking person, you will never grow entirely comfortable with some of the tactics you will be required to employ as an effective and ethical lawyer (158).

It is this more human lawyer, the uncomfortable lawyer, whom Harper Lee reveals under the adulation of her narrator Scout and who attracts real-life lawyers to the book.

It is also the Atticus Finch that emerges from legal critics who complain that Atticus is not the paragon portrayed by his worshippers. Atticus does not volunteer to defend Tom Robinson but instead is appointed. Atticus tells his brother, Jack, “I'd hoped to get through life without a case of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, ‘You're It'” (
TKAM
93). Far from a Savior figure, Atticus is more the kind of person Jack describes in his response—“Let this cup pass from you, eh?” But Atticus takes on the case in order to “face” his children (93). He admits to a profound distaste for criminal law and does not take on pro bono cases in order to overcome evil. Miss Maudie says that his specialty is more along the lines of drawing up wills: “he can make somebody's will so airtight can't anybody meddle with it” (95). Malcolm Gladwell, a columnist for the
New Yorker
, even asserts that Atticus is no moral activist because he is not brimming with rage because of Robinson's unjust verdict and because he does not take the problem of racism outside of the immediate context of Maycomb (26–32).

Steven Lubet similarly deconstructs Atticus by labeling him “not a firebrand or a reformer” or “civil rights defender” (“Reconstructing Atticus Finch” 1360). According to Lubet, Atticus does not care about the relative truth of the charges and the defense. Lubet questions whether Finch's virtue depends on Robinson's innocence or on Atticus' use of his skills, even if it is in aid of the guilty. To Lubet, there are two alternatives: Atticus is either a “paragon of honor” or a “slick hired gun” (1362). More probably the latter, Atticus, Lubet claims, uses the standard technique of mid-1930s rape cases—the “she wanted it” defense—to humiliate Mayella Ewell with his politeness, relying upon cruel stereotypes and “playing the ‘gender card'” (1345–1348, 1362). Lubet argues that there are crucial gaps in Robinson's story, yet Atticus does not insist the Robinson explain them (1347). Lubet closes his argument with statements close to Dershowitz's—“real lawyers must struggle with unending moral complexity”—but adds that “public support for the adversary system . . . [is] weakened by the unconditional insistence that all advocacy is for the better” (“Reply to Comments” 1383–1384).

Lubet's provocative article, most recently quoted by Malcolm Gladwell in his August 2009
New Yorker
article, originally appeared in the
Michigan Law Review
in May 1999. It was followed by five responses by law school professors and deans from prestigious law schools, including Stanford and University of Chicago. Lubet, in turn, commented on their responses. What is amazing is that a book, often read by junior high school students and put in the juvenile sections of libraries, almost forty years after its initial publication, would draw such attention and strong passions from such distinguished readers and that those passions would still be inflamed ten years later.

Each of the attorneys who responded to Lubet, though not agreeing with Lubet's depiction of Atticus as a hired gun, debunks the mythologizing of Atticus Finch in favor of more realistic view of the legal profession. Each also clearly admires Lee's skill in creating such a character and finds Atticus a hero.

Ann Althouse, a professor at University of Wisconsin Law School, baldly states that
To Kill a Mockingbird
does not depict Atticus “as a brave and idealistic man who took unpopular cases and stood up to the evils of his society” (1364). Instead, he is shown as a man who accepts assignments and is willing “to continue to work within the system really living in the world he is born into,” a “model of toleration of an imperfect world and acceptance of the limited effect of one's proper performance of one's own assigned role” (1364). While Lubet faults Atticus for not having the persistence to discover the truth about Mayella's life, Althouse suggests he appropriately focused on his own client (1368). Rather than insisting on absolutes, especially in judgments and revelations of truth, Atticus, according to Althouse, exemplifies someone who “has found a way to live and work as a good person in a deeply flawed society” (1369). The dialectic between Lubet and Althouse illustrates the tension between those who long for clear-cut truths in law (like Lubet, who criticizes Atticus for not living up to an ideal) and those who maintain that law is limited both by those who participate in it and by its inherent structure (Althouse's position).

Burnele V. Powell, dean at University of South Carolina School of Law, continues Althouse's line of argumentation. He pictures lawyers as actors in a “theatrical social production called a criminal trial” (1373). For him Atticus is a hero because he provides Robinson with the kind of defense that our society has defined as desirable. Atticus demands the freedom “to make arguments within the bounds of the law that are necessary for the full ventilation of issues in a criminal case” (1375). William H. Simon, Stanford University Law School professor, similarly questions whether Finch is an “icon of virtue” but also suggests treating the novel as a “professional responsibility hypothetical” through which one can judge Atticus' conduct to be “ethically plausible” both in terms of bar norms and more ambitious conceptions of justice (1376). Yet Simon asks whether Atticus entirely fulfills the strictures of the law since, at the end of the novel, he collaborates in covering up the murder of Bob Ewell, a collaboration that could be called an “obstruction of justice,” but which he accedes to in order not to expose Boo Radley to the curiosity of townspeople in a public trial (1377).
1
Simon, like Dershowitz, underlines the difference between personal morality and the law.

Randolph N. Stone, law professor at University of Chicago, combats Lubet's claims with his own advocacy of vigorous and zealous defense, which he feels Atticus rendered to Robinson. To Stone, too, the question of guilt is irrelevant, especially when so much in law is stacked against the defendant, including racial profiling, prosecutorial overcharging, discriminatory jury selections, disproportionate sentencing and confinement policies, and wrongful convictions (1381).

Thus, the public character of Atticus Finch appeals to legal readers on the surface level because of his skills in presenting a defense, cross-examining, and carrying out a summation; because of his defense of the poor and oppressed; and because of his desire to live according to the dictates of his conscience. His own community of Maycomb admires and trusts him as a man of decency and principle. Beneath the surface, Atticus is more complex but no less attractive: no civil rights activist, he does his duty, which includes an energetic defense involving exposure of the victim, airing of his client's point of view, working within a limited system, and eventually subverting the system in order to avoid exposing a troubled and suffering young man.

Lawyers at times confront the difficulty of bridging between professional and personal behavior. Dershowitz, as previously mentioned, writes that criminal defendants have the constitutional right to zealous representation that includes going right up to the line of legally and ethically permissible conduct. Yet, Dershowitz comments, lawyers can become entangled in their inability to distinguish that this kind of license extends only to the defense of others and not to their own personal and professional decisions about life (148). In
To Kill a Mockingbird
, Miss Maudie posits that Atticus has no such problem: he is the same in the house as he is in public (
TKAM
50). A
Harvard Law Review
note, “Being Atticus Finch: The Professional Role of Empathy,” employs Atticus Finch to demonstrate that ritual can be used to channel empathetic feelings successfully to bridge the divide between professional and personal self, between nonjudgmental detachment and moral activism.

Empathy in
To Kill a Mockingbird
, according to the
Harvard Law Review
note, can be disempowering (as it is with Scout's new teacher), can lead to “paternalistic pity” (as it allows Bob Ewell to break laws with impunity), can encourage self-deception (Atticus' belief that he can “stand in Bob Ewell's shoes” but talk derisively of “his kind”), or can produce inability to face ugliness (Dill's crying at the cross-examination of Robinson) (“Note” 1686–1688). But it can also be positive: it is manifest in Atticus' teaching his children to remain courteous to Mrs. Dubose despite her taunts and threats and to allow them to retain enough empathy so that they can ultimately learn about her courage. Ritual again is manifest as Atticus is friendly and “polite to a fault” in his cross-examination of Mayella Ewell. But Atticus also breaks from ritual at specific times, such as at the trial when he takes off his coat and unbuttons his vest, in order to appeal to the emotions of the jury (1687–1688).

The note closes by adjuring lawyers to adopt some form of personal ritual in order to keep empathy within the bounds of professionalism and also to employ it in its service. It recommends adopting Atticus' “brand of (semi)detached civility; subjecting every professional decision to a specific, searching series of questions, or mandating a certain amount of pro bono work for oneself” (1701). Aside from its advice on maintaining professionalism and benevolence and its plea for pro bono work, the note demonstrates the major appeal of Atticus Finch to attorneys: his ability to bridge the public and private worlds and to be a success in each, thus presenting Atticus as “the classic model of how to pursue a career and raise a family with grace and integrity” (1688).

With lawyers working sixty to eighty hours per week on average at big law firms, there is often little time or energy for a successful home life. Atticus' home with its curious and lively children who respect and emulate their father is thus very appealing. Scout says that she and Jem “found our father satisfactory: he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment” (
TKAM
6). In addition, the children mirror their father by playing at law with Scout as probate judge, Jem as sheriff, and Dill as the criminal (43–44), and Jem even
admits to wanting to become a lawyer (55). Clearly, Atticus is intent on surrounding his children in a world of law: he tells his daughter, “Law remains rigid, Miss Scout Finch. . . . You must obey the law” (34) and calls Jem's snowman “near libel” (76). When he uses “last-will-and-testament diction,” the children feel free at all times to interrupt him for a translation when it is beyond their understanding (35). And when Uncle Jack berates Scout, she yells at him because Atticus would have listened to both of the children's sides before judging (97). The
Massachusetts Lawyers' Weekly
, in reviewing a performance of the theatrical version of the story at the Wheelock Family Theater in 2007, recommended that lawyers take their children to the play because it could help parents explain to their children what they do as advocates, since their professional choices can be a challenge, especially if they are representing unpopular clients (“
Mockingbird
Still Soars”). The book thus shapes a view of an attorney who, despite having a not-easily-presented profession, plays an integral role in parenting and creating a happy private life.