Atticus- Persuasive Writing
Atticus Finch has been described as the moral compass of Harper Lee’s novel. For many he is the model of the Southern Gentleman, nobility, character, and decency. And, more than any other character that moved from Lee’s book to Robert Mulligan’s film version, Atticus Finch has developed a physical presence. Actor Gregory Peck is the embodiment of decency in the form of Atticus Finch. However, Atticus is not without his detractors.
Your assignment will be to write a persuasive response to the specific opinions of one Atticus detractor. Here are the requirements for this assignment:
- Your response needs to be based on textual support from To Kill A Mockingbird
- Use MLA guidelines for citations
- Your response needs to be written as a submission to "Legal Times" in response to Freedman’s comments. Therefore your audience will consist of the types of persons who would find reading "Legal Times" interesting and informative. You do not need to use “legalese” but your tone, word choice, and grammar usage need to be appropriate considering your audience and intended publication
- Most importantly, this is an assignment that allows you to EXPRESS YOUR OWN IDEAS. Do you agree with Freedman completely? Do you think he couldn’t possibly be more wrong? Or, do you agree with some of his sentiments and disagree with others?
- Length of assignment is 300-500 words
ATTICUS FINCH, ESQ., R.I.P.:
A GENTLEMAN BUT NO MODEL FOR LAWYERS
A new ethical role model for lawyers is being promoted in scholarly books, law reviews, and bar journals. His name is Atticus Finch. He looks a lot like Gregory Peck. He is a gentleman. He has character.
“For me,” writes a California trial lawyer in the October 1991 issue of the ABA Journal, “there is no more compelling role model that Atticus Finch…Fine citizen, parent and lawyer, Finch…would remind us that his burden [of meeting a higher standard of behavior and trust] is never too much to bear.”
Another commentator, in a November 1990 essay in the Stanford Law Review, eulogizes Atticus Finch in a different fashion, but with much the same sense of admiration: “[T]here is no longer a place in America for a lawyer like Atticus Finch. There is nothing for him to do here- nothing he can do. He is a moral character in a world where the role of moral thought has become at best highly ambivalent.”
And so on. Atticus Finch, the hero of Harper Les’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, has become the ethical exemplar in articles on topics ranging from military justice to moral theology. If we don’t do something fast, lawyers are going to start taking him serious as someone to emulate. And that would be a bad mistake.
The whole business begins with the idea that understanding and abiding by the rules of ethical conduct is not enough. Rather, it is said, a crucial element that is too often overlooked is “character.” The notion of character traces back to what Aristotle called “virtue.” The quality of virtue or character is not directly concerned with doing the right thing, but rather with being the right type of person. That is, the person of character will “naturally” act upon the right principles.
THE APPOINTED MODEL
Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the small town of Maycomb, Ala., in the 1930s. As most readers will remember, in the course of the novel a black man, Tom Robinson, is falsely accused of raping a white woman, who, in fact, had been trying to seduce him. Finch is appointed to defend Robinson.
Finch would prefer not to have been appointed but, recognizing his duty as a member of the bar, he carries out the representation zealously. He even risks his own life to protect Robinson from a lynch mob. As we are told in the book, as well as in recent commentaries on lawyers’ ethics, Finch acts as he does because he is a gentleman.
Is Atticus Finch, then, a role model for lawyers? I think not.
In risking his life to save Robinson, Finch is undeniably admirable. But am I really expected to tell my students that they should emulate Finch by putting themselves between a lynch mob and a client? I may be a staunch proponent of zealous representation, but I can’t sell what I won’t buy.
It is true that Finch, having been appointed by the court to defend an unpopular client, gives his effective representation. That’s an important ethical point, but it is also a relatively small one. And a refusal to accept a court’s appointment is punishable by imprisonment for contempt.
What looms much larger for me is Atticus Finch’s entire life as a lawyer in Maycomb (which, ironically, is what “character” is all about).
DOWN WITH GENTLEMEN?
Let’s go back to the idea of the gentleman. Part of my problem m with it is that too many people who have carried that title have given it a bad name. Gentlemen tend to congregate together to exclude others from their company and from their privileges on grounds of race, gender, and religion. In short, the gentleman has too often been part of the problem of social injustice and too seldom part of the solution. Aristotle himself was an elitist who taught that there is a natural aristocracy and that some people are naturally fit to be their slaves.
Consider Finch. He knows that the administration of justice in Maycomb, Ala., is racist. He knows that there is a segregated “colored balcony” in the courthouse. He knows, too, that the restrooms in the courthouse are segregated- if, indeed, there is a restroom at all for blacks inside the courthouse.
Finch also goes to segregated restaurants, drinks from segregated water fountains, rides on segregated buses, and sits in a park that may well have a sign announcing “No Dogs or Coloreds Allowed.” Finch is not surprised when Robinson, having been convicted by a bigoted jury, is later shot to death with no less than 17 bullets while making a hopeless attempt to escape from prison to avoid execution.
Even more telling, Atticus Finch instructs his children that the Ku Klux Klan is “ a political organization more than anything.” (David Duke, can you use a campaign manager who looks like Gregory Peck?) Finch also teaches his children that the leader of the lynch mob is “basically a good man” who “just has his blind spots.”
In this respect Finch is reminiscent of Henry Drinker, author of the first book on the American Bar Association’s Cannons of Professional Ethics, which governed from 1908 to 1970. In his 1953 book, Legal Ethics, Drinker wrestled with what he considered a particularly difficult ethical conundrum: if a lawyer is convicted of lynching a black man, is the lawyer guilty of a crime of moral turpitude and therefore subject to disbarment?
Finch is also capable of referring to Eleanor Roosevelt not as a great humanitarian or even as the first lady but, mockingly, as “the distaff side of the executive branch in Washington” who is “fond of hurling” the concept of human equality. Finch’s daughter, Scout, is at least as intelligent as Jem, but it is Jem who is brought up to understand that, following his father, he will be a lawyer. Scout understands that she will be some gentleman’s lady. Toward that end she is made to put on her pink Sunday dress, shoes, and petticoat and go to tea with the ladies- where she is taunted with the absurd proposition (which she promptly denies) that she might want to become a lawyer.
BEYOND NOBLESSE OBLIGE
Atticus Finch does, indeed, act heroically in his representation of Robinson. But he does so from an elitist sense of noblesse oblige. Except under compulsion of a court appointment, Finch never attempts to change the racism and sexism that permeate the life of Maycomb, Ala. On the contrary, he lives his own life as the passive participant in that pervasive injustice. And that is not my idea of a role model for young lawyers.
Let me put it this way. I would have more respect for Atticus Finch if he had never been compelled by the court to represent Robinson, but if, instead, he had undertaken voluntarily to establish the right of the black citizens of Maycomb to sit freely in their county courthouse. That Atticus Finch would, indeed, have been a model for young lawyers to emulate.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying I would present as role models those truly admirable lawyers who, at great personal sacrifice, have dedicated their entire professional lives to fighting for social injustice. That’s too easy to preach and too hard to practice.
Rather, the lawyers we should hold up as role models are those that earn their living in the kind of practices that most lawyers pursue- corporate, trusts and estates, litigation, even teaching- but who also volunteer a small but significant amount of their time and skills to advance social justice. That is the cause that Atticus Finch, a gentleman of character, chose to ignore throughout his legal career.
A GENTLEMAN BUT NO MODEL FOR LAWYERS
A new ethical role model for lawyers is being promoted in scholarly books, law reviews, and bar journals. His name is Atticus Finch. He looks a lot like Gregory Peck. He is a gentleman. He has character.
“For me,” writes a California trial lawyer in the October 1991 issue of the ABA Journal, “there is no more compelling role model that Atticus Finch…Fine citizen, parent and lawyer, Finch…would remind us that his burden [of meeting a higher standard of behavior and trust] is never too much to bear.”
Another commentator, in a November 1990 essay in the Stanford Law Review, eulogizes Atticus Finch in a different fashion, but with much the same sense of admiration: “[T]here is no longer a place in America for a lawyer like Atticus Finch. There is nothing for him to do here- nothing he can do. He is a moral character in a world where the role of moral thought has become at best highly ambivalent.”
And so on. Atticus Finch, the hero of Harper Les’s novel To Kill A Mockingbird, has become the ethical exemplar in articles on topics ranging from military justice to moral theology. If we don’t do something fast, lawyers are going to start taking him serious as someone to emulate. And that would be a bad mistake.
The whole business begins with the idea that understanding and abiding by the rules of ethical conduct is not enough. Rather, it is said, a crucial element that is too often overlooked is “character.” The notion of character traces back to what Aristotle called “virtue.” The quality of virtue or character is not directly concerned with doing the right thing, but rather with being the right type of person. That is, the person of character will “naturally” act upon the right principles.
THE APPOINTED MODEL
Atticus Finch is a lawyer in the small town of Maycomb, Ala., in the 1930s. As most readers will remember, in the course of the novel a black man, Tom Robinson, is falsely accused of raping a white woman, who, in fact, had been trying to seduce him. Finch is appointed to defend Robinson.
Finch would prefer not to have been appointed but, recognizing his duty as a member of the bar, he carries out the representation zealously. He even risks his own life to protect Robinson from a lynch mob. As we are told in the book, as well as in recent commentaries on lawyers’ ethics, Finch acts as he does because he is a gentleman.
Is Atticus Finch, then, a role model for lawyers? I think not.
In risking his life to save Robinson, Finch is undeniably admirable. But am I really expected to tell my students that they should emulate Finch by putting themselves between a lynch mob and a client? I may be a staunch proponent of zealous representation, but I can’t sell what I won’t buy.
It is true that Finch, having been appointed by the court to defend an unpopular client, gives his effective representation. That’s an important ethical point, but it is also a relatively small one. And a refusal to accept a court’s appointment is punishable by imprisonment for contempt.
What looms much larger for me is Atticus Finch’s entire life as a lawyer in Maycomb (which, ironically, is what “character” is all about).
DOWN WITH GENTLEMEN?
Let’s go back to the idea of the gentleman. Part of my problem m with it is that too many people who have carried that title have given it a bad name. Gentlemen tend to congregate together to exclude others from their company and from their privileges on grounds of race, gender, and religion. In short, the gentleman has too often been part of the problem of social injustice and too seldom part of the solution. Aristotle himself was an elitist who taught that there is a natural aristocracy and that some people are naturally fit to be their slaves.
Consider Finch. He knows that the administration of justice in Maycomb, Ala., is racist. He knows that there is a segregated “colored balcony” in the courthouse. He knows, too, that the restrooms in the courthouse are segregated- if, indeed, there is a restroom at all for blacks inside the courthouse.
Finch also goes to segregated restaurants, drinks from segregated water fountains, rides on segregated buses, and sits in a park that may well have a sign announcing “No Dogs or Coloreds Allowed.” Finch is not surprised when Robinson, having been convicted by a bigoted jury, is later shot to death with no less than 17 bullets while making a hopeless attempt to escape from prison to avoid execution.
Even more telling, Atticus Finch instructs his children that the Ku Klux Klan is “ a political organization more than anything.” (David Duke, can you use a campaign manager who looks like Gregory Peck?) Finch also teaches his children that the leader of the lynch mob is “basically a good man” who “just has his blind spots.”
In this respect Finch is reminiscent of Henry Drinker, author of the first book on the American Bar Association’s Cannons of Professional Ethics, which governed from 1908 to 1970. In his 1953 book, Legal Ethics, Drinker wrestled with what he considered a particularly difficult ethical conundrum: if a lawyer is convicted of lynching a black man, is the lawyer guilty of a crime of moral turpitude and therefore subject to disbarment?
Finch is also capable of referring to Eleanor Roosevelt not as a great humanitarian or even as the first lady but, mockingly, as “the distaff side of the executive branch in Washington” who is “fond of hurling” the concept of human equality. Finch’s daughter, Scout, is at least as intelligent as Jem, but it is Jem who is brought up to understand that, following his father, he will be a lawyer. Scout understands that she will be some gentleman’s lady. Toward that end she is made to put on her pink Sunday dress, shoes, and petticoat and go to tea with the ladies- where she is taunted with the absurd proposition (which she promptly denies) that she might want to become a lawyer.
BEYOND NOBLESSE OBLIGE
Atticus Finch does, indeed, act heroically in his representation of Robinson. But he does so from an elitist sense of noblesse oblige. Except under compulsion of a court appointment, Finch never attempts to change the racism and sexism that permeate the life of Maycomb, Ala. On the contrary, he lives his own life as the passive participant in that pervasive injustice. And that is not my idea of a role model for young lawyers.
Let me put it this way. I would have more respect for Atticus Finch if he had never been compelled by the court to represent Robinson, but if, instead, he had undertaken voluntarily to establish the right of the black citizens of Maycomb to sit freely in their county courthouse. That Atticus Finch would, indeed, have been a model for young lawyers to emulate.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying I would present as role models those truly admirable lawyers who, at great personal sacrifice, have dedicated their entire professional lives to fighting for social injustice. That’s too easy to preach and too hard to practice.
Rather, the lawyers we should hold up as role models are those that earn their living in the kind of practices that most lawyers pursue- corporate, trusts and estates, litigation, even teaching- but who also volunteer a small but significant amount of their time and skills to advance social justice. That is the cause that Atticus Finch, a gentleman of character, chose to ignore throughout his legal career.