{"id":25419,"date":"2016-02-19T13:56:14","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T18:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=25419"},"modified":"2016-02-19T13:56:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T18:56:14","slug":"r-i-p-harper-lee-1926-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2016\/02\/r-i-p-harper-lee-1926-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Harper Lee (1926-2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"To_Kill_a_Mockingbird\"American letters lost one of its legendary figures when Harper Lee died at 89 on February 19.\u00a0 Lee\u2019s beloved To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961, and it was the<\/em> most popular of all twentieth-century novels by American authors.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s work also ranks at the top in the more specialized world of law-related popular culture.\u00a0 Atticus Finch, the novel\u2019s protagonist, inspired many to become lawyers and to work for equality for African Americans.\u00a0 Gregory Peck won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1963 for his portrayal of Atticus Finch in the film version of the novel, and the respected American Film Institute has ranked Peck\u2019s Atticus Finch as the greatest hero in the history of the cinema.\u00a0 Heroism is hard to rank, but Atticus Finch is surely popular culture\u2019s most important lawyer.<\/p>\n

Sadly, Lee\u2019s final years were full of controversy.\u00a0 When she authorized the publication of Go Set a Watchman<\/em>, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em>, some questioned her mental soundness.\u00a0 Others suggested that caregivers and lawyers had manipulated her, hoping that profit from the sequel would mean larger pay-outs for them further down the road.<\/p>\n

And Go Set a Watchman<\/em> was indeed disillusioning.\u00a0 It revealed racial bias on Atticus Finch\u2019s part so severe that his grown-up daughter at least temporarily turned away from her father.\u00a0 My goodness, was the great crusader for racial equality a bit of a bigot?<\/p>\n

For my part, I choose to remember what To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> had to say about law and racial inequality.\u00a0 To wit, law, legal proceedings, and legal institutions must be purged of bias if African Americans are ever to achieve full equality in the United States.\u00a0 Against the backdrop of police shootings of young African Americans, questionable conduct by prosecutors, and malfunctioning grand juries, the lesson from To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> seems even truer than when Lee wrote her extraordinary novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American letters lost one of its legendary figures when Harper Lee died at 89 on February 19.\u00a0 Lee\u2019s beloved To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961, and it was the most popular of all twentieth-century novels by American authors. Lee\u2019s work also ranks at the top in the more specialized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-culture-and-law","category-public","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}