SOURCE: Althouse, Ann. “Reconstructing Atticus Finch? A Response to Professor Lubet.” Michigan Law Review 97, no. 6 (May 1999): 1363-69.

In the following essay, Althouse responds to the essay “Reconstructing Atticus Finch,” by Steven Lubet. Althouse argues that Atticus is a model lawyer in the sense that he maintains the same high ethical standards in his personal life as he does in his capacity as a lawyer.

“He's not an example, Dill. … He's the same in the courtroom as he is on the public streets.”¹

In one of her childishly obtuse moments, Scout, the narrator of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, denies that her father Atticus Finch is any sort of proper example of how a lawyer ought to act when cross-examining a witness. The prosecutor's cross-examination of the accused Tom Robinson has moved her friend Dill to tears:

I couldn't stand … [t]hat old Mr. Gilmer doin' him thataway...