Atticus Finch, Social Influence, and Tempering the Tyranny of the Majority

• In Event: Literature and Political Philosophy

Abstract

As Alexis de Tocqueville famously noted, attorneys have the capacity—much needed in a democracy—to moderate the tyrannical tendencies of the majority. Attorneys and judges challenge the generally omnipotent majority directly via their actions in the least democratic branch—the judiciary. This is by design and long noted—not least memorably by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 78.

But the moderating influence of the attorney is not merely political and legal. At least insofar as Tocqueville is right about their training, temperament, and tendencies, attorneys also temper the tyranny of the majority indirectly through their social and cultural influence. Their training provides the skillset—most notably skill in speech—necessary for influence; their temperament tends towards a habituation-born reliance on their own reason over abasement to passionate mass opinion; and their tendencies lean heavily towards a love of order, reason, and reliance on the wisdom of the past. In short, as individuals, attorneys differ from the average citizen. And hence, considered as individual members of their communities, attorneys have the potential to wield a social and cultural influence that parallels their legal and political influence.

Taking Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation about the attorney’s capacity to moderate the tyranny of the majority as a starting point, this essay examines the social and cultural influence of attorneys via a close reading of America’s favorite fictional attorney, Atticus Finch. As with his real-world counterparts, Atticus’s direct—which is to say legal—impact is easier to observe and catalog: he thwarts a lynch mob, asserts the legal rights of a criminal defendant that most of the community does not consider worthy of genuine defense, and loses a trial against popular prejudice with only one converted juror to show for his efforts.

But Atticus is far more successful in his resistance against the prejudices of his town’s racist majority when he is not acting as an attorney. By the end of the novel, the non-legal effect of his speech has exercised a moderating effect on his clients, his neighbors, his children, and even those members of the community who persist against him. This capacity to moderate the tendencies of the majority is wrought by Atticus, not via the inflaming speech of the demagogue, but rather by a particular mode of speech that engages the listener’s reason. Even as it engages the listener’s rational capacity, the Attic style of speech (after which Lee named Atticus Finch) moderates discourse and teaches citizens how to disagree productively and rationally with one another.

Attorneys speak in their capacities as parents, family members, neighbors, and citizens, and the family, community, and cultural effects of this speech should not be discounted. Indeed, if strong enough, these familial, community, and cultural effects will come full circle to have their own influence on legal and the political events. Within To Kill a Mockingbird, this is illustrated by the fact that even Atticus’s influence as an attorney is enabled by the influence that he has exerted as a father and member of the community. Careful reading of his engagement with the would-be lynch mob and the jury reveal that even the moderate degree of success that he achieves as an attorney would be impossible without the more subtle and indirect influence that he has achieved as father, neighbor, and citizen.

Finally, To Kill a Mockingbird demonstrates that the moderating social and cultural influence of the attorney—wrought by use of moderate, rational, Attic speech—is not the sole province of the attorney. Lee’s novel exhibits the same qualities of speech as those of her protagonist. Thus her novel, with the social and cultural influence that it has wrought on generations of attorneys and young citizens, mirrors both the methods and the effects of Atticus’s moderating speech. Lee tells a truth about the tyranny-resisting and moderation-inducing power of the attorney which, by the end of her novel, she also has modeled for her readers. Ultimately, Lee models how all citizens have the capacity to thus resist the tyranny of the majority.

Author

• Michelle M. Kundmueller, Old Dominion University