Taunya Lovell Banks
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill A Mockingbird. Most law students know about its protagonist, Atticus Finch, having read the novel or seen the sanitized film version released in 1962. Finch, the widower and small-town Alabama lawyer, remains an icon in the minds of law students, lawyers and the general public. Thus it came as no surprise that my Law & Literature seminar students after reading several fictional and non-fictional stories about flawed lawyers suggested I add Lee’s book to next year’s list of readings to provide a positive counter image.
In the decade since I started teaching the seminar my students never read about Atticus Finch. This was a conscious decision because I, and a few other people, do not consider Finch especially heroic. He was a decent man practicing law in an unjust society who did his job, nothing more. Several years ago in writing about the film adaptation of the book I said: “Finch, by putting on an earnest defense in Tom Robinson’s case, was breaking the rules of his racially segregated society . . . . [and] perhaps this is what resonates with many people who tout [him] as the ideal lawyer.”[1]
In the early 1990s legal ethics scholar Monroe Freedman complained that Finch was not a good moral example for contemporary lawyers because, among other things, he did not volunteer to take the case.[2] He was appointed by the local judge to represent Robinson and theoretically could not refuse. At times Finch even comes across as an apologist. When his children ask about the Ku Klux Klan, he says it is a “political organization more than anything.” He conceals from them the awful truth about that organization’s use of violence and intimidation to deny black Americans basic civil rights.
Freedman was attacked by other lawyers for characterizing Finch as an unworthy moral and ethical legal role model. Subsequently he wrote:
We’re left with the immortal Atticus Finch, a lawyer who didn’t do pro bono work, who justified the actions of an attempted murderer, and who found little fault with the Ku Klux Klan. Finch may live on as a mythical figure, but we should ask why some members of the legal profession find him worthy of deification and why they are so vociferous in his defense.[3]
In reading about planned celebrations of To Kill A Mockingbird’s 50th anniversary it seems clear that Finch’s iconic status remains largely untarnished almost two decades later.[4] Since Freedman only a few legal scholars have questioned Finch’s personification as the ideal heroic lawyer.[5] Thus next year I plan to teach To Kill A Mockingbird. I will ask my Law & Literature students to evaluate Finch’s representation of Tom Robinson from three perspectives: Alabama in the 1930s, the book’s setting, Alabama in 1960, its publication date and Alabama fifty years later. If they decide Finch acted ethically and heroically viewing him from the perspective of each era then perhaps he merits his immortal status. Although I continue to have serious doubts about his iconic statute, perhaps I can be persuaded to join the bandwagon.
[2] Monroe Freedman, “Atticus Finch, Esq., R.I. P.” , 14 Legal Times 20 (Feb. 24, 1992).
[3] Monroe Freedman, Finch: The Lawyer Methologized, 4 Legal Times. 25 (May,18,1992). 20. Id. 21.
[4] For a list of recent articles extolling Finch’s virtues see Renee Newman Knake, Beyond Atticus Finch: Lessons on Ethics and Morality from Lawyers and Judges in Postcolonial Literature, 32 J. of Legal Profession n. 35 (2008).
[5] For more critical assessment of Atticus Finch see, Steven Lubet, Reconstructing Atticus Finch, 97 MICH. L. REV. 1339 (1999) and W. Bradley Wendel, Introduction, Our Love Hate Relationship with Heroic Lawyers, 13 WIDENER L.J. 1 (2003).
1970 was a tumultuous year to say the least. On the international front the war in Southeast Asia expanded dramatically as the United States invaded Cambodia, while at home one of the major news stories was the killing of four students at Kent State in Ohio by the Ohio National Guard. In 1970 gas cost only 36 cents a gallon and tuition at the Law School for in-state students was only $205 a semester. One of the top musical hits of 1970 was Stevie Wonder's Signed, Sealed and Delivered, a song that proved its vitality more recently as the background music at many of President Obama's campaign events.
Another big hit from 1970 that has continued to prove its longevity and relevance after forty years is the Thurgood Marshall Law Library's membership in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). Nominated for the program by Congressman Edward Garmatz, the library joined the FDLP in December 1969 and became officially active in 1970. As a member of the FDLP the library has received, free of charge, important legal works such as the United States Code, the CFR, Supreme Court Reports, congressional hearings and a variety of official government publications such as the 9/11 Commission Report. In return the library agreed to care for the publications as it would other library material and to provide reference support about government information to our primary clientele - our students and faculty - as well as to the general public; responsibilities that the library continues to embrace and support. [learn more about program here- http://www.gpo.gov/libraries/]
Today over 90 percent of the material distributed to the Federal Depository Library Program is in electronic form and the Government Printing Office remains one of the largest publishers in the world. Although much of what is produced today is electronic there remains a significant gap between this newer content and the valuable historical material that scholars often need. This was demonstrated most recently by a request for a copy of the confirmation hearings of Thurgood Marshall for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. While there were several sources in the Federal Depository Library Program for the paper version there were no freely available electronic copies.
The Thurgood Marshall Law Library also gives back to the Federal Depository Library Program by providing cataloging for Department of Justice and Congressional Judiciary Committee publications to national databases; creating original collections of electronic materials from the Congressional Research Service and by partnering with GPO and the United States Commission on Civil Rights to create the nationally recognized Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights database.
By participating in the FDLP the library is able to provide key support for many of the law school research needs -
The Federal Depository Library Program is essential to my work and the work of the 71 person professional staff at the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security. The depository program has provided us with access to the critical Congressional, agency, and court materials that would be extremely difficult to gather in the absence of the program. I should also add that the research documents of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) are perhaps the most valuable source for those of us who need to dive into often technical and obscure Congressional policies, as well as the history underlying those policies. Our library's efforts to capture and make available a comprehensive survey of CRS reports through their website is essential to my and our Center's work. I speak for myself, my Center and the entire law school faculty in congratulating the Thurgood Marshall Law Library for their continued commitment to the Federal Depository Library Program. It is critically important to our scholarly community.
Michael Greenberger, Law School Professor and Director, Center for Health and Homeland Security, the University of Maryland School of Law
The core mission of the Federal Depository Library Program is to ensure that government information in all forms remains freely available to the public. After forty years the Thurgood Marshall Law Library remains committed to that proposition signed, sealed and delivered!
[Letter of Recognition from the Superintendent of Documents - GPOletter40thAnniv ] | [ View library FDLP designation letter] | [hear Stevie Wonder perform Signed, Sealed and Delivered]
