Florida State University College of Law Scholarship Repository Scholarly Publications 12-1999 Liberating Lawyers: Diverging Parallels in Intruder in the Dust and To Kill a Mockingbird Rob Atkinson Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.law.fsu.edu/articles Part of the Legal Education Commons, Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons, and the Legal Profession Commons Recommended Citation Rob Atkinson, Liberating Lawyers: Diverging Parallels in Intruder in the Dust and To Kill a Mockingbird, 49 DUKE L.J. 601 (1999), Available at: https://ir.law.fsu.edu/articles/383 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Scholarly Publications by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Duke Law Journal VOLUME 49 DECEMBER 1999 NUMBER 3 LIBERATING LAWYERS: DIVERGENT PARALLELS IN INTRUDER IN THE DUST AND TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ROB ATKINSON† ABSTRACT Professor Atkinson hopes William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust will replace Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird as our favorite story of lawyerly virtue. In both stories, a white male lawyer and his protégé try to free a black man falsely accused of a capital crime. But below these superficial similarities, Professor Atkinson finds fundamental differences. To Kill a Mockingbird, with its father-knows-best attor- ney, Atticus Finch, celebrates lawyerly paternalism; Intruder in the Dust, through its aristocratic black hero, Lucas Beauchamp, and his lay allies, challenges the rule of lawyers, if not law itself. The first urges us to serve others in a way that confirms our superiority in a system we have made in our own image; the second engages us in a † Professor of Law, Florida State University. I am grateful to Paulo Annino, Sandy D’Alemberte, Stephanie Gamble, Adam Hirsch, Tahirih Lee, Josh Morse, and Mark Seiden- feld for their comments and encouragement. Jeremy E. Cohen provided invaluable research assistance. I am particularly indebted to Thomas Shaffer, the pioneer student of Atticus’s eth- ics, who not only commented in detail on my manuscript, but also shared with me his notes and an unpublished manuscript on Gavin. The Florida State University College of Law supported my work with a summer research grant. In writing a paper on two bildungsromans, I have been constantly reminded of my men- tors and my protégés, those who have taught me, and those whom I have taught. I am most thankful for those times when the distinction has disappeared, when we have ceased to be teacher and student, and become simply friends. That happens in only one of the novels I con- sider; that, ultimately, is why I consider it the better. 601 602 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [49:601 dialogue with those who may be able to help us make our common world better than we alone could ever have imagined. Beyond this comparison, Professor Atkinson invites us to wonder why we prefer the more comforting tale to the more challenging. In his view, the fault lies largely with contemporary legal education. Even as that education recommends our using the law to liberate others, it fails to free us from our own prejudices and preconceptions. Current calls for more skills training and doctrinal scholarship both reflect and ex- acerbate this failure. Although Professor Atkinson doubts that litera- ture can lead us to eternal, transcendent values, he believes that it can open us to new possibilities of personal virtue and social justice. Like the Socratic dialogues, Intruder in the Dust makes us examine our lives in dialogue with others. That, Professor Atkinson concludes, is both its principal lesson for us lawyers and its best claim for elevation in our canon. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction............................................................................................604 I. The Diverging Parallels ................................................................610 A. The Setting: Southern Hospitality .....................................610 1. The Heroic Ethos of Intruder in the Dust...................612 2. The Gospel According to Atticus ...............................616 B. Characters of the Black Defendants..................................621 1. Tom Robinson, the Good Samaritan..........................622 2. Lucas Beauchamp, the Denigrated Nobleman..........628 C. Lawyers and Clients.............................................................636 1. Selecting the Lawyers ...................................................636 2. Listening to the Client’s Story .....................................639 3. Settling up.......................................................................644 D. Lawyers and “Others”.........................................................647 1. Lawyers and Women.....................................................647 2. Lawyers, Race, and Class .............................................665 3. Lawyers and the North .................................................686 4. Lawyers and Innocents .................................................690 E. Lawyers and the Law...........................................................705 1. Intruder: Law Burdened by Busyness .........................706 2. Mockingbird: Lawyers Liberating the Laity ..............710 II. Lessons for Law and Literature...................................................713 1999] LIBERATING LAWYERS 603 A. Divergent Parallels and the Search for Transcendent Norms................................................713 1. Critique of the Weisberg-West Project.......................714 2. An Alternative Project .................................................722 B. The Medium and the Message ...........................................724 C. “Insiders” and “Outsiders”.................................................725 D. Writers and Lawyers, Literature and Law........................730 III. Lessons for Lawyers ......................................................................732 A. Looking Backward...............................................................733 B. Looking Forward .................................................................740 Conclusion ..............................................................................................747 We know that all men are not created equal in the sense that some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than oth- ers, some people have more opportunity because they are born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies bake better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentleman, is a court. Atticus Finch, criminal defense counsel1 “Mr. Finch, if you was a nigger like me, you’d be scared, too.” Tom Robinson, rape defendant2 “I’m a nigger,” Lucas said. “But I’m a man too. I’m more than just a man.” Lucas Beauchamp, murder defendant3 1. HARPER LEE, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD 218 (1960) [hereinafter LEE, MOCKINGBIRD] (quoted by his daughter, Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch). 2. Id. at 207. 3. WILLIAM FAULKNER, GO DOWN, MOSES 46-47 (Vintage Books 1990) (1940) [herein- after FAULKNER, MOSES]. 604 DUKE LAW JOURNAL [49:601 ‘You’re just my uncle.’ ‘I’m worse than that,’ his uncle said. ‘I’m just a man.’ Gavin Stevens, criminal defense counsel4 INTRODUCTION William Faulkner in Intruder in the Dust and Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird have given us strikingly parallel accounts of law- yers as liberators in the most literal and compelling sense. Faulkner’s Gavin Stevens and Lee’s Atticus Finch work against great odds to release innocent black clients from incarceration, where they stand falsely accused of capital crimes, crimes attributed to them largely because of their color. Both of the would-be liberators are presented as progressive southerners, but southerners in good standing.5 Both are aided by children, through whose awakening eyes we see much of the stories.6 Yet, the stories also differ markedly. Most saliently, Faulkner’s defendant lives to be freed from jail; Lee’s dies fleeing from prison. In a sense, Gavin Stevens succeeds, and Atticus Finch fails—more precisely, the former’s client saves himself; the latter’s gets himself killed. Faulkner’s is a story of how a black man coolly uses a white lawyer and his nephew, often very much against their wishes, to de- liver himself from the law’s very human limitations; Lee’s is a story of how a white lawyer and his daughter, despite their most sincere and strenuous efforts, ultimately fail to save a black man who runs, panic- stricken, before the law’s promised deliverance. As the stories differ, so have their receptions. From the novels’ first appearances, critics have hailed Atticus and castigated Gavin.7 4. WILLIAM FAULKNER, INTRUDER IN THE DUST 121 (First Vintage Int’l ed. 1991) (1948) [hereinafter FAULKNER, INTRUDER] (as spoken to his nephew, Charles (“Chick”) Mal- lison, Jr.). 5. See Thomas L. Shaffer, Growing Up Good in Maycomb, 45 ALA. L. REV. 531, 556-57 & n.119 (1994) [hereinafter Shaffer, Growing Up Good] (describing Atticus’s insistence that Maycomb is his family’s home and that his opponents in Robinson’s trial are their friends and citing this as a theme in Intruder as well). 6. See Richard H. King, Lucas Beauchamp and