SBAND PRESIDENT
SBAND PRESIDENT
THE ROLE OF AN ATTORNEY IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM
HON. TED SANDBERG SBAND President
Greetings to all from Grand Forks. I present two literary selections for consideration today:
FIRST SELECTION:“ A long extension cord ran between the bars of a second-floor window and down the side of the building. In the light from its bare bulb, Atticus was sitting propped against the front door. He was sitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, oblivious of the nightbugs dancing over his head... when four dusty cars came in from the Meridian highway, moving slowly in a line. They went around the square, passed the bank building, and stopped in front of the jail. Nobody got out. We saw Atticus look up from his newspaper. He closed it, folded it deliberately, dropped it in his lap, and pushed his hat to the back of his head. He seemed to be expecting them.” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 15( J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1960).
The above scene details attorney Atticus Finch standing watch( technically sitting) with his jailed client Tom Robinson the evening prior to the start of his jury trial, when Finch is met by a lynch mob intending to remove and hang his client. It is a decent metaphor showing the role of an attorney in our system: A lawyer positioned between the client and the angry citizens, ensuring the client’ s due process rights are protected and the matter is heard fairly in a court of law. It is probable all lawyers, regardless of the type of case, see themselves at one time or another in this bold and brave role standing athwart the wall and defending the rule of law; just as it is further probable all lawyers who have read To Kill a Mockingbird hope their professional and ethical dignity matches the fictional prowess of Atticus Finch.
SECOND SELECTION:“ Tessie Hutchinson was in the center of a cleared space by now, and she held her hands out desperately as the villagers moved in on her.‘ It isn’ t fair,’ she said. A stone hit her on the side of the head. Old Man Warner was saying,‘ Come on, come on, everyone.’ Steve Adams was in the front of the crowd of villagers, with Mrs. Graves beside him.‘ It isn’ t fair, it isn’ t right,’ Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” Shirley Jackson, The Lottery, THE NEW YORKER( June 26, 1948).
The above scene concludes Jackson’ s horrific cautionary short story about a culture in which a lottery is conducted to choose the random community member who will be sacrificed for a forgotten and lost reason( ostensibly perhaps for good crops). In the story, this year’ s victim is a woman and mother of three children who fatefully picks the wrong slip from the lottery box and is thereafter descended upon by her community, friends, and her own family to be stoned to death. As said by author Dr. Catherine Sustana in her writing on the story in 2024,“ Regardless of which interpretation you favor, The Lottery is, at its core, a story about the human capacity for violence, especially when violence is couched in an appeal to tradition or social order... all the villagers participate( even giving Tessie’ s young son some pebbles to throw), so no one individually takes responsibility for the murder.”
The upshot of these two literary events? What a difference a lawyer makes. In both stories, a mob is about to engage in deadly violence against one of their own community members. All the parties in the two respective community mobs appear to believe they are doing the right and proper thing in support of their community. This is not to ordain or approve of the mob’ s intentions in either tale, but rather to point out the members of the respective mobs appear at the outset to be convinced of the righteousness of their grisly task. They don’ t appear to be happy about the task, and don’ t appear to be celebrating the fact the task has fallen on them, but the task has come and they will do their duty.
In Mockingbird, the racial basis of the mob’ s task is likely only part of the story: Other than race( which is surely not to be downplayed), the mob is also incensed by the brutal beating and rape of a young teenaged girl, in her own home, by a much stronger and older man. The facts of the case against Tom Robinson are salacious and disturbing, such that other than racial animus, it is likely many in the community are simply furious and filled with righteous indignation at a rape in their small town.
Yet, in To Kill a Mockingbird, the presence of Lawyer Finch serves as the moral blockade to the violence. While the mob is eventually deterred from their task by the reminder of their deeper morality by Finch’ s young daughter, neither the daughter nor her moral-reminder would have occurred without the lawyer first standing between the mob and the defendant.
4 THE GAVEL