By Maria Kantzavelos
Law Bulletin staff writer
Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the original publication date of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a principled lawyer who dares to take on the case of a black man accused of raping a white woman in the Deep South of the 1930s.
Since its publication on July 11, 1960, Lee's fictional Atticus Finch has evolved into a sort of folk hero for many in the legal profession. And her novel, which tells the tale through the young eyes of the lawyer's daughter, Scout, has inspired a generation to carry on Finch's work in the real world.
The novel, which has been translated into more than 40 languages, sells an estimated 750,000 copies each year, according to HarperCollins Publishers. The book was originally published by J.B. Lippincott and Co., which eventually became part of what is now HarperCollins.
In light of the book's 50th birthday, this week's Amicus Curious features some reflections from local lawyers, judges and law professors about the novel's impact.
Cook County Associate Judge Neil H. Cohen has a 40th anniversary edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, signed by the author. It's a prized possession that he doesn't keep in his chambers at the courthouse in Maywood, where he hears misdemeanor criminal cases.
He said he acquired the book, inscribed to him by Lee, as a gift from a friend who lives in Monroeville, Ala., a few doors away from the author's home.
"I was so amazed, because [Lee] keeps to herself," Cohen said. "I couldn't have gotten a better gift from anyone at any time, other than health and joy from my children and my wife."
For Cohen, who first read the novel when he was around 12, "To Kill a Mockingbird" is about "justice on many different levels, and not going with the mob, and one man standing alone - the honor in doing so, even if you lose."
"Isn't that a wonderful thing to have as a role model for a young man when I was 12 years old?" Cohen said.
The judge said he tends to re-read the novel about once every seven or eight years.
"It certainly gave me a role model to aspire to as a prosecutor, as a defense lawyer, and now as a judge, on how to treat people and why it's important to do justice."
Nancy Fredman Krent, a partner in the Arlington Heights office of Hodges, Loizzi, Eisenhammer, Rodick & Kohn LLP, said "To Kill a Mockingbird" is the reason she became a lawyer. She said she first read the book in eighth grade, and never considered doing anything else after that.
"I read that book and I wanted to be Atticus Finch," Krent said. "I decided that was the greatest thing a person could do: to stand up for what was right, to be a leader in the community, and be an example of what was good in the world."
Her parents weren't lawyers, and so her first exposure to what a lawyer did was the fictional Finch.
"I always believed that being a lawyer was something noble, because that's how I first saw it," Krent said.
Today, Krent represents public school districts and is the wife of Harold J. Krent, the dean of Chicago-Kent College of Law. She said one of the book's many powerful lessons surfaces when Finch takes his lonely walk down the center aisle of the courtroom, after his client is wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury. The black spectators who fill the balcony all rise in Finch's honor as the lawyer passes them from below, exiting the courtroom.
"I think it's the idea that this was about a fight for justice. It is less about the result you get, than the effort you make," she said. "That's one of the really powerful messages: that you do what's right, even though you know you won't win."
"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'." That line from the book, uttered by Reverend Sykes to Finch's daughter, Scout, who watches her father in action from the balcony alongside her brother, Jem, is Marc R. Kadish's favorite passage in the novel.
Kadish, who serves as Mayer, Brown LLP's director of pro bono activities and litigation training, said he views Finch as "among the first, early pro bono heroes."
"Atticus Finch took the representation of Tom Robinson on as a pro bono matter. There was no mention of pay whatsoever," Kadish said.
Kadish came to appreciate the book fairly late. He was around 40 when he first read it. Since then, he has incorporated lessons from the book into his speeches at law schools and pro bono conferences, and when he recruits for the firm.
"I say, 'How many of you went to law school with the image of Atticus Finch ringing in your ears?' They always smile at me, and half of them nod," Kadish said.
"I think he's a man of integrity, because he did the right thing," Kadish said. "He accepted the appointment, he tried the best he could, he went to the jail the night before the trial when the crowd was going to lynch his client and saved his life ."
Kadish, a former Chicago-Kent College of Law clinical teacher, said he has incorporated a favorite scene from the movie version of the book - the scene after the jury returns its verdict - in the evidence and trial advocacy classes he has taught.
"My question would always be to the class: 'Now that you've learned these technical skills of what the use of evidence is in a trial, who are you going to use it for?'" Kadish said. "'Are you going to have a professional career where, no matter what kind of law you do, the people you represent will appreciate your work as much as the black people in the balcony of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' appreciated his efforts?'"
Michael J. Gallagher, a 1st District justice of the Illinois Appellate Court, considers "To Kill a Mockingbird" "one of those life-changing, life-altering books."
He read it when he was 9 years old.
"When I read it I remember being really angry as a kid, thinking this is so unfair what happened to Tom Robinson," Gallagher said. "I thought, if you can rectify things like that by being a lawyer, that is what I wanted to do."
Today, the appeals justice keeps more than one copy of the novel in his chambers.
"'To Kill a Mockingbird' is a sublime book. It is a book about decency, compassion and goodness," Gallagher said. "It is also a book about mutual respect.
"Notice how Atticus never talks down to anybody, his children, Calpurnia, the Cunninghams, and the Robinsons. He earns respect by being civil and respectful."
Finch is also a critical thinker, Gallagher said.
"He takes the unpopular case of Tom Robinson, knowing that he will earn the enmity of the townspeople and the country farmers," Gallagher said. "Yet he takes it and does his utmost to win an acquittal, knowing he is pushing a large boulder up a steep hill.
"Atticus is a great example of what lawyers and judges do and should do: make hard decisions, make honest decisions, even when there are obstacles in the way."
Not everyone is as quick to idealize Finch, who has come to be talked about in legal circles as if he were a real-life person.
Northwestern University School of Law professor Steven Lubet has written "Reconstructing Atticus Finch," a 1999 article in the Michigan Law Review that offers a critical reappraisal of the story.
"Naturally, everybody wants to celebrate Atticus Finch, but we do tend to overlook the parts of the book that show him in a much less than ideal light," Lubet said in a recent telephone interview.
For example, Lubet said, Finch was a member of the Alabama legislature, but he doesn't seem ever to have introduced a bill to repeal the Jim Crow laws. "He was far from a civil rights crusader," Lubet said. And, he said, "he didn't try to get any black people seated on the jury."
"He modeled many, but not all, of the lawyerly virtues," Lubet said.
Still, for many in the legal community, the fictional Finch remains as an enduring legacy.
Chicago Volunteer Legal Services Foundation has long had an award named in the character's honor: the Atticus Finch Award. The prestigious award is not given annually. Rather, it is "reserved for a selfless individual or entity who makes their life's work ensuring equal access to justice," CVLS executive director Margaret C. Benson said.
The legal aid agency created the Finch award in 1992.
"It's Atticus Finch. He's like the perfect lawyer. He is a role model for all of us," Benson said. "Because he was so dignified, very caring, but he didn't let his emotions get in the way. He's a wonderful role model for all lawyers for doing the right thing - integrity."
Cohen, the Cook County judge whose copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is inscribed to him by the author, said the novel "resonates in our core."
He borrowed a few of Finch's words to his children, to show how the book resonates for him in his role on the bench.
"One must keep in mind that, 'it's a sin to kill a mockingbird,'" Cohen said. "A sentence has to fit the circumstance, a sentence has to fit the person you're sentencing. And a verdict does as well."