The October series of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminars is resuming October 21. Judy Cornett, association professor at UT College of Law, will speak about “The Ethics of Atticus Finch.” Those who attend the seminar will be motivated to think more deeply about Finch as a heroic lawyer, confront Malcom Gladwell’s criticism about Finch and reach their own conclusions about whether Finch is a hero or what type of hero he is, Cornett says.
Attendees will learn about relevant Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct and will measure Finch’s actions in the novel against those rules. Finally, they will be reminded of their own ethical duties in today’s world, she says. This seminar will begin with an 8 a.m. breakfast and registration at The Walden Club on 633 Chestnut Street inside the Republic Centre. Breakfast will be followed by the seminar from 8:30 to 11:45 a.m. This seminar provides 3.0 hours dual CLE credit approved for Tennessee. The cost is $85 for CBA Members, $125 for non-members and $25 for legal support staff.
Finch is the preeminent heroic lawyer in American literature, inspiring many youngsters to pursue a career in law and providing a role model for practicing lawyers who want to “do the right thing” under difficult circumstances. Recently, however, Finch has been criticized by intellectual provocateur Malcolm Gladwell for doing nothing to challenge the racist establishment in 1930s Alabama. Cornett says when she began teaching law and literature, she regularly assigned To Kill a Mockingbird to her students, because so many of them already knew the novel and because it is an iconic law and literature text. She did not start speaking and writing about the novel, however, until 2007, when she presented a paper at the annual Southeastern Association of Law Schools conference about urban and rural values in the novel and the portrayal of Finch as an archetypal “country lawyer.”
In August 2009, Gladwell’s controversial article, “The Courthouse Ring,” appeared in The New Yorker, and this article, combined with the 50th anniversary of the novel’s publication in 2010, led her to begin speaking and writing about the novel.
The seminar will discuss the portrayal of Finch in the novel, especially in light of Gladwell’s critique that he is not a “civil rights hero.” It will also examine a number of Finch’s actions in light of the current Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct to determine whether these actions would be considered ethical today. Finally, the seminar will discuss ethical dilemmas that arise whenever a lawyer represents an unpopular client.
Cornett says there are many lawyers representative of Finch in today’s society.
“These lawyers represent their clients to the best of their ability. If their clients are unpopular, these lawyers may endure personal inconvenience or the disapprobation of the community,” she says. “In representing their clients, these lawyers may motivate others within the system – other lawyers, judges, jurors – to confront and question their own preconceptions and prejudices.” Cornett says she believes there are many “unsung heroes” within the bar today.
“If these heroes only had a storyteller as brilliant as Harper Lee to tell their stories, there would be many more heroic lawyers in literature,” she says. Cornett is an associate Professor of law at the University of Tennessee, where she teaches law and literature, civil procedure, legal writing, and legal ethics. She holds a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Tennessee and Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia. Her article, Atticus Finch: Christian or Civic Hero? was published in the Tennessee Law Review as part of a dialogue celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird. She has spoken to numerous bar and community groups about the novel. Along with the late Jerry J. Phillips, she is the co-author of Sound and Scenes: A Text on Law and Literature.
Cornett combines her legal knowledge with her love of English literature in her work. She has been published in the William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law, and the Tennessee and Cincinnati law reviews and is a member of the Modern Language Association, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the American Society for Legal History. She served on the Tennessee Supreme Court Commission on Gender Fairness and as co-chair of the Tennessee Supreme Court Committee to Implement the Recommendations of the Racial and Ethnic Fairness Commission and the Gender Fairness Commission.
Cornett says she became interested in law during the two years between undergraduate and law school, when she worked as a paralegal at the U.T. Community Legal Clinic (which then became Knoxville Legal Aid Society and is now Legal Aid of East Tennessee.) It was there that she was privileged to work with skilled attorneys who represented clients in civil cases who would not otherwise have had representation. Pursuant to lay practice rules, she was also able to represent clients herself in Social Security and unemployment compensation appeals. “Seeing the wonderful work done by the legal aid attorneys and being able to help clients achieve their legal objectives motivated me to become a lawyer,” she says.
Cornett says she is delighted and honored to speak to the Chattanooga Bar Association. The program she will be presenting on October 21, 2011, is a revised and expanded version of her keynote presentation at the Knoxville Bar Association’s Law Day program from May 2011.