Bond on Atticus Finch in the Law School Classroom

Cynthia D. Bond, The John Marshall Law School, is publishing To Kill a Lawyer-Hero: Atticus Finch in the Law School Classroom in volume 45 of the Rutgers Law Record (2018). Here is the abstract.

This article addresses the well-known lawyer character from Harper Lee’s novel and subsequent film, To Kill a Mockingbird. For years, legal scholars have rhapsodized about Atticus Finch as the ultimate “lawyer-hero” and role model for aspiring attorneys, with little dissent. When Lee’s literary executor published an early draft version of the novel entitled Go Set a Watchman in 2015, many readers were shocked to encounter an Atticus Finch who was an apologist for segregation and the leader of a White Citizens Council chapter. This article reflects on evolving views of Finch as lawyer-hero, examining how he plays in the contemporary law school classroom. This article argues that, regardless of Go Set a Watchman, law professors should be teaching Atticus Finch critically given the unacknowledged white privilege embedded in To Kill a Mockingbird. Yet how can we critique Finch and still nurture students’ interest in and admiration of social justice lawyering, embodied for some in the mythic lawyer-hero? This article proposes techniques to dismantle the heroic construct surrounding Atticus Finch, shifting the focus from fictional images of the socially-engaged lawyer to students’ own professional aspirations.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Maatman on The Mockingbird's Brief: The Fairness Argument Stated In To Kill a Mockingbird @MaryEllenMaatma

Mary Ellen Maatman, Widener University Delaware Law School, is publishing The Mockingbird's Brief in volume 47 of the Cumberland Law Review (2017). Here is the abstract.

By comparing the texts of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird, this article explores what Harper Lee ultimately wanted to say in To Kill a Mockingbird, and why she said it the way that she did. The article’s thesis is that To Kill a Mockingbird can be understood as the “brief” written to make the case that Go Set a Watchman attempted to state: the massive resistance movement of the 1950’s was wrong. This article examines the rhetorical situation Harper Lee confronted as she wrote Go Set a Watchman and then transformed it into To Kill a Mockingbird. This situation is defined by considering Harper Lee and her upbringing, her audience in the Deep South, and the need to speak to that audience as the White Citizens’ Council movement took hold in the region. Go Set a Watchman was Lee’s first attempt to respond to the rhetorical situation posed by the Council movement’s purposes, methods, and rhetoric. In that work, Lee responded to this situation with a raw, morality-based counterargument to the Council movement. This argument had little chance of success, as segregationists at that time regarded themselves to be on the moral side of history. Thus, this article examines how To Kill a Mockingbird works as “the Mockingbird’s brief.” If published in the 1950’s, Go Set a Watchman’s morality argument might have had traction with Southern moderates, but was unlikely to persuade segregationists. Yet, legal developments in desegregation litigation indicated that segregationists were willing to at least pay lip service to fairness principles. Thus, Harper Lee used the reworking of Go Set a Watchman into To Kill a Mockingbird to seize the rhetorical situation with a fairness argument calculated to win over her audience. The shift to fairness, which at first blush might be perceived as ducking segregationists’ punches, actually was a shift to greater effectiveness for the time and place for which Lee wrote. This article concludes that Lee’s rhetorical strategy with To Kill a Mockingbird was effective. Ultimately, Harper Lee held a kind of reverse mirror up to segregationists by remaking her Atticus into a man who embodied what southern law and lawyers could be, if guided by fairness principles.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Greene on Atticus Finch's Nature Revealed in "Go Set a Watchman"

Sally Greene is publishing Atticus, Uprising in volume 47 of the Cumberland Law Review (Winter 2016). Here is the abstract.

The controversial publication of Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman, in 2015, allows us to see Atticus Finch from a new angle. He is revealed to be a "gentleman bigot," not unlike many white southern men of the mid-twentieth century. As interesting a revelation is the shock with which his daughter, Jean Louise ("Scout"), receives this news. Why didn't you tell me this is how it was? she asks him. Her disillusionment, which perhaps mirrors Lee's own, finds parallels in the lives of other white southerners, like the writers Willie Morris and Elizabeth Spencer, who only in retrospect realized the depth of the racist society in which they were raised. For Morris and Spencer, and for countless others, the necessary response was self-exile. The publication of Go Set a Watchman comes as an unexpected gift, an admonishment: a reminder to white readers that even today, we are often blind to the racism that is right before our eyes.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Fincham @derekfincham on the Authenticity of Go Set a Watchman

Derek Fincham, South Texas College of Law Houston, has published Is Go Set a Watchman Authentic? at 47 Cumberland Law Review 101 (2016). Here is the abstract.

For many lawyers, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird represents an important goal to which law and its practitioners should strive. The novel describes the struggle to achieve justice for a black man in the face of deep-seated institutional racism. It stands as a beloved work of literature, widely read and deeply appreciated. Therefore, any work that Lee would have written after To Kill a Mockingbird would have sparked tremendous interest, given the beloved place her first novel holds. But many other questions have arisen since the release of Go Set a Watchman. This essay aims to address how the authenticity of the novel should be weighed by using the tools of art historians and the art market.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Rapping on Atticus Finch as Legal Hero After "Go Set a Watchman"

Jonathan Rapping, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, is publishing It's a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird: The Need for Idealism in the Legal Profession in volume 114 of the Michigan Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch has served as a role model and inspiration for law students and lawyers for over fifty years. When Go Set a Watchmen was published last year, Finch's status as legal hero was threatened. In this essay I argue that Finch is a uniquely important role model to lawyers committed to social justice and that he has the ability to inspire attorneys seeking to live lives of purpose. We desperately need this inspiration in our profession. I conclude that in a profession that has lost its way we should continue to view Finch in this light and resist the temptation to destroy this fictional hero.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Reading the Character of Atticus Finch in "Go Set a Watchman"

Allen Mendenhall, Auburn University, has published Children Once, Not Forever: Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman and Growing Up in volume 91 of the Indiana Law Journal Supplement (2015). Here is the abstract.

This is the first law review article to analyze Harper Lee's novel Go Set a Watchman and in particular its portrayal of the famed attorney Atticus Finch. This article argues that the latest, controversial depiction of Atticus Finch is not a sharp departure from the depiction of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The notion that Go Set a Watchman presents a new or different Atticus Finch is predicated on ahistorical assumptions and a willful misreading of the ominous, violent, and dangerous world of the fictional, yet eminently recognizable, Maycomb, Alabama.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Some Considerations on "Go Set a Watchman" From John Denvir

John Denvir has published a post on Go Set a Watchman here at his blog Guile Is Good.

Rethinking Atticus Finch

In the National Law Journal,  some law faculty discuss the character of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman.

The article begins:

Atticus Finch — unimpeachable lawyer and civil rights champion, or unapologetic racist? Readers have struggled to reconcile these two versions of fiction's most iconic attorney since the July 14 publication of Harper Lee's "Go Set A Watchman," set some 20 years after the events of "To Kill A Mockingbird."

A particularly lively debate broke out within the legal academy, where Finch served as an inspiration for more than a half-century, not to mention a staple of legal ethics courses.

"Over the years, Atticus Finch has remained the most famous, iconic representative of what is good in the legal profession," said Margaret Russell, a ­professor at Santa Clara University School of Law who recommends "Mockingbird" to her students. "My first reaction [to "Watchman"] was, 'Oh no, a hero has fallen.' "

Law professors parsed the new novel on blogs, in op-eds and in conversations with colleagues. Some rejected the Finch presented in "Watchman" — who attended Ku Klux Klan meetings and decries the NAACP — or viewed him as a completely separate character from the Finch in the first novel. Others welcomed a more nuanced and perhaps realistic portrayal of a white attorney in the Jim Crow South.

See also this article, also in the NLJ.

Monroe Freedman and Atticus Finch

As Go Set a Watchman passes one million copies in sales, the National Law Journal notes that Monroe Freedman took the position in 1992 suggesting that Atticus Finch was not quite the heroic character everyone else has made him out to be.

“If we don’t do something fast, lawyers are going to start taking him seriously as someone to emulate. And that would be a bad mistake,” Freedman wrote. “I would have more respect for Atticus Finch if he had never been compelled by the court to represent Robinson (a black defendant) but if, instead, he had undertaken voluntarily to establish the right of the black citizens of Maycomb to sit freely in their county courthouse.”

Does Scout's portrait of Atticus in Harper Lee's newly published novel vindicate Professor Freedman's view of him? What do you think?