ICYMI: Some Recent Law and Humanities Publications From Robert E. Atkinson, Jr. @FSUCollegeofLaw

ICYMI:

Robert E. Atkinson, Jr., Florida State University College of Law, has published and is publishing:

Growing Up With Scott and Atticus: Getting From "To Kill a Mockingbird" Through "Got Set a Watchman," 65 Duke L.J. Online 95 (2016).

Liberalism, Philanthropy, and Praxis: Realigning the Philanthropy of the Republic and the Social Teaching of the Church, 84 Fordham L. Rev. 2633 (2016).

A Primer on the Neo-Classical Republic Theory of the Nonprofit Sector (And the Other Three Sectors, Too), in Research Handbook on Not-For-Profit Law (Matthew Harding, ed., Edward Elgar, 2018).

Sea Captains and Philosopher Kings: "Billy Budd" as Melville's Republican Response to Plato's "Republic,"  in the Hofstra L. Rev. (forthcoming 2020).

Writer Re-Written: What Really (Might Have) Happened to Atticus and Scott, 69 Ala. L. Review 595 (2018).

McAdams on The Cross-Examination of Mayella Ewell @UChicagoLaw @AlaLawReview

Richard H. McAdams, University of Chicago Law School, has published The Cross-Examination of Mayella Ewell at 69 Alabama Law Review 579 (2018). Here is the abstract.

This essay explores one central part of Tom Robinson’s trial in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird: Atticus Finch’s cross-examination of Mayella Ewell. The eight- year-old Scout cannot fully understand the strategy and meaning of Atticus’ questions, but the trial supplies enough clues to understand more of Mayella’s life than is generally understood.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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.

Jeff Daniels To Star in To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway Later This Year @Jeff_Daniels

Jeff Daniels (The Newsroom, The Martian, Godless) is starring as Atticus Finch in Aaron Sorkin's adaptation of Harper Lee's iconic To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway. His co-stars include Celia Keenan-Bolger (Scout), and Stark Sands (Horace Gilmer).Others attached to the project include LaTanya Richardson Jackson and Stephen McKinley Henderson. The director is Bartlett Sher.

The play opens December 13. More here from Variety. 

Mr. Daniels is brave; trying to get an audience to forget Gregory Peck in the Finch role is like trying persuade viewers to think about someone other than Laurence Olivier as Hamlet. (Don't think about elephants! Don't think about elephants!) Well, Kenneth Branagh does, I think, pull it off in the 1996 version. Are Richard Burton (1964), Benedict Cumberbatch (2015), and Nicol Williamson (1969) equally good? I can't decide.

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.

Will Monroeville Become Maycomb?

Harper Lee's attorney, Tonja Sheets, wants to turn Monroeville, Alabama, Ms. Lee's home town, into even more of a tourist attraction by creating a sort of "To Kill a Mockingbird Trail" there, with replicas of some of the buildings in the novel and establishment of a new museum in a converted bank building. More here from Smithsonian.com.

A 1930s Alabama Rape Trial and "To Kill a Mockingbird"

A newly published book makes the case (pun intended) for a link between a real life trial and Harper Lee's famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Joseph Madison Beck's My Father and Atticus Finch (Norton, 2016) retells the story of a 1930s  Alabama rape trial in which Mr. Beck's father defended a black man against rape charges. It also explores pre-civil rights era race relations in the South, and the image of Southern lawyers.


Additional information, including an interview with the author, here.  Via Allen Mendenhall @allenmendenhall.

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.

Ayers on Atticus Finch's "Half-Virtuous" Integrity

Andrew B. Ayers, Office of the Solicitor General of New York, has published The Half-Virtuous Integrity of Atticus Finch. Here is the abstract.

Atticus Finch has two kinds of integrity, but only one of them is genuinely admirable. On one hand, he is rightly admired for standing up for the things he values. On the other hand, Atticus is also praised for being true to himself — being “the same in his house as he is on the public streets.” But this kind of integrity, contrary to what many lawyers and legal ethicists believe, is not a virtue. Far from being virtuous, a solidly integrated self, like Atticus’s, can sometimes make it harder to act virtuously. For example, Atticus’s self-understanding is solidly integrated around his commitment to the justice system. But this self-integration prevents him from noticing his only chance to save Tom Robinson’s life. To Kill a Mockingbird shows that it is sometimes better to have tension in our identities. The identities of characters like Calpurnia, Maudie, and others are conflicted or divided; but these tensions allow them to be admirable in ways that Atticus is not. They can cross social boundaries, subvert their own social roles, and radically criticize their community precisely because their identities are fragmented or in flux. This should be inspiring to lawyers, and to the legal ethicists who have long worried that lawyers’ roles will cause schisms in their identities. Sometimes tension in the self is exactly what we need to be good.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Empathy, Masculinity, and Atticus Finch

Richard H. McAdams, University of Chicago Law School, has published Empathy and Masculinity in Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird in American Guy: Masculinity in American Law and Literature 239-261 (Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum, Oxford University Press, 2014). Here is the abstract.

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird illustrates a troubled relationship between lawyering and empathy and between empathy and masculinity. To begin, empathetic understanding has two sides: it can produce compassionate or altruistic behavior, but there is also a strategic value: a competitor who understands the thoughts and feelings of others is better able to anticipate an opponent's next move and stay one step ahead. Atticus Finch demonstrates both aspects of empathy: his ability to imagine the world from the perspective of others makes him a more compassionate and helpful father and neighbor, but also a more effective lawyer, better able to cross-examine adverse witnesses and to make arguments that (might) appeal to jurors. Atticus understands better than anyone else in Maycomb the tragic predicament of Mayella Ewell, but he uses his empathy to harm her, that is, to help his client Tom Robinson by exposing her as a liar. The irony is that the empathetic insight that makes Atticus the best person to cross-examine Mayella also makes him (among all those who believe she is lying) feel the most compassion for her. But the role of zealous advocate leaves limited room for showing compassion to one's adversary. Empathy connects with the novel’s focus on masculinity. The novel offers a new version of white manhood in the Jim Crow South. The conventional white southern male of the 1930s romanticized the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and adhered to a strict code of chivalry that required the use of violence to assuage insults to honor, particularly the honor of white southern women. According to this chivalric ideology, the greatest threat to white womanhood was black male predation, and the manly response was the lynching, not only of alleged black rapists but of other black men whose behavior seemed to question white supremacy. The novel offers Atticus as a male hero who rejects the white supremacist assumptions of lynching. Less obvious are the tools the novel uses to draw our attention to the concept of manhood and to invert its standard meaning. Atticus' courage is nonviolent, which the novel contrasts with cowardly violence; Atticus fights for a lost cause that is not the Confederacy, but its victim; and Atticus acts valiantly by protecting an innocent black man from the accusation of a white woman. Southern chivalry is turned on its head. The connection to empathy is that Atticus' sense of empathy is one of the key ways in which he systematically violates period expectations for masculinity.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

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?

New Group To Take Over Putting On Stage Version of "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Just days after the Monroe County Historical Museum announced that it would not longer be producing the stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird, news has surfaced that a newly formed nonprofit group may be working its way toward putting on the play beginning next year. More here from the Associated Press, here from the BBC, which reports that Harper Lee, author of the novel, is leading the nonprofit, called the Mockingbird Company. Link here to the group's Facebook page.

Monroeville, AL, No Longer To Put On "To Kill a Mockingbird" After This Year

The Monroe County Heritage Museum, of Monroeville, Alabama, Harper Lee's home town, which has produced the stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird for nearly 30 years, apparently will no longer put on a production after this year. Museum director Tom Lomerick told his board yesterday that Dramatic Publishing Company, which handles licensing for the rights owner, Christopher T. Serger, has terminated the agreement with the Museum. Many people come to Monroeville every year to attend performances of the play, and Mr. Lomerick estimates that the town earns around $1 million a year in revenues from this tourism.

Dramatic Publishing Company has indicated it will grant rights to put on the play to a group in Kentucky.  More here from the New York Times, here from Al.com.

Love, Loyalty, and Sacrifice in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Linda Ross Meyer, Quinnipiac University School of Law, has published Love, Law and Sacrifice in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Here is the abstract.

This paper reflects on themes of love, loyalty, and sacrifice in the film version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' Using the typology of Kierkegaard's knight of the infinite/knight of faith, the paper argues that Atticus does not stand for liberal principles of universal law but rather faith in the possibilities of friendship and neighborliness.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Writer and the Law

John James Berry, Barry University School of Law, has published The Law, The Writer and The Work: How an Author's Interaction with the Legal System Impacts His Writing. Here is the abstract.

By tracing the lives led by four famous authors and exploring the societies which produced them, this article will show how law affects literature in ways that many readers may not notice. Rather than explore what was expressed by the author, this work will examine the affect the background of the author has on the tone of the works of literature which they produce, the affect the law and their culture's legal system had on their background, and how the characteristics of the cultures and authors reflect the characteristics of the governing legal system. Ultimately, this piece shows that, rather than a society's legal system reflecting its' underlying culture, the power of the law has the ability to shape the culture which it is supposed to serve.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Deadline Approaching For Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The deadline for authors and publishers to enter a novel to win the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction is April 8. The ABA Journal and The University of Alabama School of Law created the prize to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and to honor former Alabama law student Harper Lee for the role model she created.

The prize will be given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society, and their power to effect change. Only works first published in 2010 qualify. Completed entry forms must be submitted by the publisher prior to April 8. There is no entry fee.

Members of the Harper Lee Prize Selection Committee, who are responsible for choosing this year’s winner, are:

• Best-selling author David Baldacci

• Morris Dees, co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

• Best-selling crime novelist and former prosecutor Linda Fairstein

• Robert J. Grey Jr., partner, Hunton & Williams, past president of the American Bar Association

• CNN Senior Analyst Jeffrey Toobin

Visit www.HarperLeePrize.org for more information or to download an entry form.

The University of Alabama, a student-centered research university, is experiencing significant growth in both enrollment and academic quality. This growth, which is positively impacting the campus and the state's economy, is in keeping with UA's vision to be the university of choice for the best and brightest students. UA, the state's flagship university, is an academic community united in its commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all Alabamians.

CONTACT: Rebecca Walden, UA School of Law, 205/348-5195, rwalden@law.ua.edu or Allen Pusey, ABA Journal, 312/988-6214, Allen.Pusey@americanbar.org

Empathy In "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Katie Rose Guest Pryal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has published Walking in Another’s Skin: Failure of Empathy in to Kill a Mockingbird , in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird: New Essays, Chapter 12 (Michael J. Meyer ed., The Scarecrow Press, UK, 2010). Here is the abstract.

Empathy - how it is discussed and deployed by both the characters in TKAM and by the author, Lee - is a useful lens to view the depictions of racial injustice in the novel, because empathy is the moral fulcrum on which the narrative turns. In this essay, I argue that To Kill a Mockingbird fails to aptly demonstrate the practice of cross-racial empathy. As a consequence, readers cannot empathize with the (largely silent) black characters of the novel. In order to examine the concept of empathy, I have developed a critical framework derived from rhetorician Kenneth Burke's theory of identification and then used this framework to examine some ways in which empathy manifests itself in our legal system, manifestations that help reveal the failings of TKAM.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.