{"id":3359,"date":"2009-01-19T21:19:42","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T02:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3359"},"modified":"2009-01-19T21:19:42","modified_gmt":"2009-01-20T02:19:42","slug":"an-ode-to-john-mortimer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/01\/an-ode-to-john-mortimer\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ode to John Mortimer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>As faculty blogger of the month, I feel obligated to address this month’s question about one’s favorite movie about legal practice.\u00a0 In truth I have no such favorite movie, only some that are less tedious or off-putting than others.\u00a0 Yet the recent passing of John Mortimer (left) compels me to say just a few words.\u00a0 (I know an “ode” is supposed to be a poem, but I’m a lawyer after all, so a short essay is the best I could hope for.)<\/p>\n

I honestly do not much like movies or television shows about lawyers or legal practice.\u00a0 It’s not that they are “unrealistic”; they are, after all, entertainment, not educational in purpose.\u00a0 The lawyers are usually caricatures at one extreme or the other.\u00a0 On the one side you have the unctuous Atticus Finch-type (I’d rather leave the planet than read or watch To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> — Finch loses the big case and gets his client killed; nice job!) and on the other you have the venal sleaze-ball.\u00a0 I like subtlety.\u00a0 Denzel Washington’s character in Philadelphia<\/em>, for example, is affecting because he portrays a lawyer fighting his own demons while battling for his client.<\/p>\n

And this brings me to John Mortimer, himself an accomplished barrister, a champion of free speech, and a gifted writer who died last week in Great Britain.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Mortimer’s alter ego was the quintessential Old Bailey hack Horace Rumpole.\u00a0 (The Old Bailey is London’s criminal court.)\u00a0 Over the decades Mortimer wrote scores of Rumpole stories that appeared in print and on television.\u00a0 I’ll confess that I have not watched a Rumpole episode since the 1980s, but as a young lawyer learning how to try cases I was drawn to the character.\u00a0 I certainly did not want to emulate Rumpole — an obnoxious fat old guy who drank way too much and ignored his family.\u00a0 (On my worst days, even I don’t aim that low.)\u00a0 Rather, Mortimer’s Rumpole had a passion for lawyering along with a grudging affection for his clients, mostly petty criminals, despite their shortcomings.\u00a0 He relished examining witnesses and trading salvos with opposing counsel and the bench.\u00a0 Most of all, Rumpole appreciated that trying cases was at once both an art form and an intellectual exercise, and the trial itself a key feature of the rule of law. Rumpole did not judge his clients; rather, he understood that under the rule of law his client was guilty only if the prosecution met its burden of proof.\u00a0 And in Horace Rumpole the audience saw a lawyer who would rather be trying a case, win or lose, than doing just about anything else in the world.\u00a0 When this happens you have found your niche in the profession, whatever it may be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As faculty blogger of the month, I feel obligated to address this month’s question about one’s favorite movie about legal practice.\u00a0 In truth I have no such favorite movie, only some that are less tedious or off-putting than others.\u00a0 Yet the recent passing of John Mortimer (left) compels me to say just a few words.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-culture-and-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359","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\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}