Skip to main content

What are the different ideas about the way the law operates and the different views expressed in Chapter 23 of To Kill A Mockingbird?

After the trial and conviction of Tom Robinson, Jem talks with his father about the laws and conditions that relate to this trial.


  • Jim Crow and the law

When Jem objects to the severe penalty imposed upon Tom Robinson--



"It ain't right. He didn't kill anybody even if he was guilty. He didn't take anybody's life"--



Atticus informs his son that in Alabama rape is a capital offence. Still Jem objects to the jury's severe sentence, and Atticus points to the one deciding factor that exists in their time: 



"Tom Robinson's a colored man, Jem. No jury in the part of the world's going to say, 'We think you're guilty, but not very' on a charge like that....It was either a straight acquittal or nothing."



Later in his conversation with his son, Atticus explains that the jury of white men who served at the trial are reasonable men, but during the trial something came



"...between them and reason....they couldn't be fair if they tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against a black man's, the white man always wins."



  • Circumstantial Evidence

Then, Atticus tells his son that he has no argument against rape being a capital offence, but he does have deep disapproval of the jury's having found Tom guilty on what was purely circumstantial evidence. When Jem points out that many others have been convicted on circumstantial evidence, Atticus qualifies his disapproval as he objects to the fact that judgments are made upon the basis of "reasonable doubt." He believes that when there are no eye witnesses, there should not be a conviction if there is even a "shadow of a doubt."


  • Judgment by juries

Jem feels that juries should be done away with; Atticus feels that the law should be changed, not to eliminate juries, but to have the law state that only judges have the power of fixing the penalty in capital cases. [Interestingly, Alabama now allows for judge override of a sentence given by a jury.]


He does point out, however, that people often carry resentments into the jury box, subtly alluding to Bob Ewell who lied and made Tom Robinson a scapegoat for his daughter's conduct.


  • Selection of juries

Jem wonders aloud why there are rarely residents from the town who serve on juries in Maycomb, and why someone like Miss Maudie is never on a jury. His father tells him that women are not allowed to serve on a jury, and the townspeople rarely serve because they would have conflicts of interest many times. Atticus illustrates this last point by saying that if a resident of Maycomb such as Mr. Link Deas, who owns a store in town, were called to be a juror in a case involving two townspeople, he would wish to exclude himself because he would not want to lose either person's business. For, a verdict against one of them may cause resentment by that person, and this feeling could spread to other customers.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more