Morality And Justice In Just Mercy, By Harper Lee

Can a person change, for worse or for better? This is a question that is widely debated. Are people stuck at one level of morality or can they be persuaded to change? If so, how do they change? How can someone go from being so confident in one mindset to believing fully in another? It seems impossible, but maybe it’s not. This is a prevalent question in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which is set in the 30s and focuses on Scout, a lawyer’s young daughter who watched her father struggle with the case of a Black man accused of a crime he did not commit. The book explores the complexities of morality and justice, and similar themes are expressed by Bryan Stevenson in his written work Just Mercy, written in 2014, and his TED Talk,

During Atticus’s closing argument at the trial of Tom Robinson, he attempts to sway the jury’s sense of justice by declaring, “There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal— there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal” (Lee 233). It is shown many times throughout the book how Atticus is a sort of moral role model for Scout and Jem, but his children are not the only people he attempts to influence. Throughout the trial, and particularly in his closing argument, he preaches equality and the importance of justice over biases. In Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, he describes the experience of meeting a director of law named Steve Bright; he recalls, “I was taken aback by his immediate belief that I had something to offer. He broke down the issues with the death penalty simply but persuasively, and I hung on every word, completely

Even Atticus, Scout and Jem’s concerned and caring father, has moments of moral uncertainty; for example, when his sister expresses her distaste for the upbringing of his children, he tells them, “She asked me to tell you you must try to behave like the little lady and gentleman that you are. She wants to talk to you about the family and what it’s meant to Maycomb County through the years, so you’ll have some idea of who you are, so you might be moved to behave accordingly” (Lee 151). Atticus has very strong morals, but even someone with very strong morals can be impacted by the outside world and people close to them, in this case the magisterial Aunt Alexandra. Though Atticus does eventually quell his feelings of intimidation and correct himself, he does let his sister’s beliefs get in the way of his own. In his TED Talk, “We Need to Talk About an Injustice,” Stevenson makes a powerful statement about the systemic racism behind the death penalty by stating, “And yet, in this country, in the states of the Old South, we execute people -- where you're 11 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it if the defendant is black and the victim is white -- in the very states where there are buried in the ground the bodies of people who were lynched”