“My father was a strict segregationist. When I was growing up, all the men were, from the Supreme Court, to the Congress, to the Churches.” – President Jimmy Carter (N.Y. Times, July 16, 2015)
John S. Skilton, U.W. 1969, is a partner in the patent litigation practice in the Madison office of Perkins Coie.
About 20 years ago, when I was 51 and president of the State Bar of Wisconsin, I wrote a column entitled “God Bless Atticus Finch,” with the following quotation from Harper Lee’s inspiring novel To Kill a Mockingbird: “You’ve got everything to lose from this, Atticus. I mean everything.”
Atticus Finch, of course, was that fictional (now mythical) lawyer who, at age 51, had the courage – in the face of bigoted outrage – to defend (unsuccessfully) a young black man accused of raping a white girl in the rural South (Maycomb, Ala.) during the depths of Jim Crow. The book was narrated by Atticus’ 10-year-old daughter, “Scout.” When she asked Atticus why he took the case, he responded:
“This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience – Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man ... the one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
Some 60 years later, an “earlier” Harper Lee novel, Go Set a Watchman, was “discovered” and belatedly published this year. Watchman focuses on Scout’s experiences upon her return from New York some 20 years after the time of the Mockingbird trial. Atticus is now 71, and Scout is shocked and disillusioned to discover that Atticus had just attended one of those infamous Citizen’s Council meetings, and worse, had earlier been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Her heart-felt outrage and merciless vilification of Atticus – and all he stands for – is the focus of a substantial portion of the book. Indeed, her word choices “shock the conscience” of a modern-day reader. The 71-year-old Atticus comes off as a patronizing and paranoid – though polite and gentlemanly – bigot. And some Watchman readers profess to be disillusioned, or at least disappointed, in this “different” Atticus.
So, how do I square the two Atticuses? Easy.
But I suggest that lawyers can read the two books together and not lose perspective. No doubt, this “old” Atticus held deeply flawed beliefs. Don’t we all?
Abraham Lincoln, too, was a product of his times: he did not believe in social equality; he even considered sending the African American population back to Africa. But these beliefs did not prevent him from doing the right thing when the time came. That is because Lincoln also believed in the law – in self-evident truths, for example, that “all men are created equal” – and in fundamental principles of fairness rooted in the Constitution and the common law. And of course, to borrow a current concept, Lincoln was evolving. Although Atticus did not defend to Scout, his brother did:
“The law is what he lives by. He’ll do his best to prevent someone from beating up somebody else, then he’ll turn around and try to stop no less than the Federal Government – just like you child. You turned and tackled no less than your own tin god – but remember this, he’ll always do it by the letter and the spirit of the law. That’s the way he lives.”
He then told Scout to follow her own conscience.
So how do I square the two Atticuses? Easy. Take the recent tragic events in Charleston, for example. People evolve. “The law” is our tool – it provides immutable principles. Our individual consciences are our “watchmen.” And had either Atticus been alive, I’ll bet he would have been out there getting rid of that awful flag.
