To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee, published in 1960. It is set in the city of Maycomb, Alabama in the USA during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The novel tells the story of Scout and her brother Jem, who, together with Dill, becomes obsessed with their reclusive neighbor, Boo Radley. Meanwhile, their father, Atticus Finch, has chosen to defend a black man who is falsely accused of raping a white woman. Justice, what is right and fair by all of society’s standards and morals, is, together with injustice, one of the main themes of the novel, and all kinds of justices are presented: Distributive justice, procedural justice, restorative justice, and retributive justice. Although some of the people in Maycomb, especially Atticus, respect …show more content…
The process of procedural justice, which has to do with fairness for all, is interfered with in the novel on the basis of skin color as Tom Robinson’s trial is purely a formality. During the trial Atticus, during his closing speech, announces his faith in the justice system and states that “in our courts all men are created equal” (TKaM, 227), even though he previously told the children that “we were licked a hundred years before we started” (TKaM, 84) because racism is deeply rooted in the South. Because of the prejudices the jury carry with them into court, they are doomed to fail in dispensing real justice, at least until all men are, not only created as, but also seen as equals and represented in such juries. But this should not be necessary because, just like Lady Justice, everyone should be looking at a case objectively, unaware of a person’s skin color, religion, or any other affiliations, which is the idea behind the United States Supreme Court motto “Equal Justice Under law.” When previously President of the United States, Obama, was recruiting new Supreme Court Justices he was looking for certain qualities, and stated