You could see this, I suppose, as a reification of the white savior but I think that would be uncharitable. I prefer to see it as a glimpse of what lawyers, at their best, can be.

I agree with Kali that, at that time and in that place, lawyers labored under impossible conditions and just continuing the battle with faith in an eventual victory (which, who knows, could turn out to be yours) is also a good lesson for lawyers. I think her point dovetails nicely with Mike Morse’s reference to “Crossing Hitler,” a book that I am now reading. That resistance was immediately futile does not mean that it was not righteous and, ultimately, efficacious.

As for the movie, I was also – when I first saw it as a boy living in a community that was not integrated and at a time when the battles over civil rights were fresh in both history and my childhood experience – deeply moved by it. One of the things that I remember (and I have not seen the movie for at least 10 years) was Robinson’s dignity in the face of the accusations against him and his accuser’s discomfiture at the position that she found herself in. He was, of course, the victim but, in a way, she was as well and the film was big enough to get that across.

Of course another issue is whether one ought to recognize that submission to injustice is in the client’s best interest. Challenging the Jim Crow South or Nazi Germany was not a fair fight and the client – rather than the lawyer – would bear the brunt of defeat. To Kill A Mockingbird is not set up to address that question. But that does not diminish its greatness.

Atticus Finch’s great triumph is that he convinces everyone in the court room, white and black, that Tom Robinson is innocent and that the Ewell girl, the poor white victim, has been pressured to perjure herself by her viciously racist father. When the trial ends, everyone realizes this.

The all-white, all male jury still convicts Tom on principle, i.e., the principle that the testimony of a white female witness must be accepted over that of a black man, even if it is false. But Finch has exposed the moral bankruptcy of white southern society in which he lives.

What I find particularly interesting is the challenge that the movie poses to the idea that a lawyer should represent his client zealously, irrespective of the merits of the cause. Atticus Finch shows no particular interest in the Robinson case until he is appointed counsel by the local circuit court judge, and he seems ready to put on a pro forma defense until he realizes that Tom Robinson is actually innocent.

It is only once that he is convinced of his client innocence that he draws upon his considerable courtroom skills to establish the baseless nature of the charges against him.

What would the point of the movie have been if Tom Robinson had actually raped the Ewell girl and Atticus had used his lawyer skills to cause the poor victim to break down on the stand and appear to incriminate someone else? What if Robinson was only faking the bad arm? Even worse, what if Atticus had counselled him to pretend to have a disability. That certainly would not be the Atticus Finch we have come to know and love.

This, it seems to me, is a standard feature of heroic television and movie lawyers: their real commitment is to seeing that justice is done, so they are only interested in defending innocent clients.

There is a wonderful Perry Mason episode where Perry tells one of his distraught female clients accused of murdering her husband that unlike everyone else he believes that she is innocent. Moreover, he makes it clear that he only agreed to represent her because he believed that she was innocent. Were she actually guilty, she would have to find a different lawyer. Lawyers like Mason and Finch judge their own clients first, and if they represent them only if they are morally worthy.

This is how the non-lawyer public wants lawyers to be. Popular audiences dislike ambiguity, and they have little use for the claim that guilty parties deserve a zealous defense. So too, it seems, did Atticus Finch and Perry Mason (and Ben Matlock and the Defenders and Petrocelli and every other tv or movie lawyer hero worth his or her salt).

Atticus Finch was a brave and moral man willing to risk his reputation and his safety to see that justice was done. He just didn’t have much use for traditional legal ethics.