Abstract
This essay explores the intricate interplay between law, ethics, and the literary imagination, urging a re-examination of the boundaries that traditionally separate these fields. By engaging with seminal works such as The Merchant of Venice, To Kill a Mockingbird, and the cinematic portrayal of Veerappan, the essay interrogates how fictional narratives manipulate legal principles and ethical norms, often distorting the reader’s or viewer’s moral compass. It highlights the dangers of uncritical consumption of literature and cinema, which can subtly perpetuate biases and reinforce societal inequities. The essay contends that literature, with its capacity to embody and transmit social facts, wields a profound influence on public perception and ethical discourse. However, this influence is double-edged, as narratives can either illuminate the complexities of justice or obscure them through manipulative storytelling. The essay calls for a critical, interdisciplinary approach to reading and viewing, one that recognizes the author’s or filmmaker’s biases and resists the seduction of simplistic moral conclusions. Ultimately, it advocates for a more reflective engagement with literature and cinema, recognizing their potential to shape both individual and collective ethical consciousness in an interconnected world.
The Place of Literature and Law
There is an unsettled debate within the academic community surrounding the porosity of boundaries between law and literature. The two fields have been brought together by some scholars while others maintain that this does not yield significant dividends. The rigid boundaries of the two disciplines must be transgressed to comprehensively understand their interaction and formulate an interdisciplinary approach.
Neither law nor literature are autonomous entities, and neither can be instrumentalized to deepen the understanding of the other without accounting for several surrounding elements that shape each discipline.
James Boyd White, in his work titled “Law as Language: Reading Law and Reading Literature” has identified the common, rudimentary foundation of both law and literature to be ‘language’. For this very reason, we see them cross paths and engage with each other in an artificial discourse of disciplines.
As humans with a tendency to engage in the meaning-making business, we unconsciously play with these boundaries and contribute to this discourse. While reading, we may immerse ourselves in the text in two ways.
One, by creating our own meaning out of the text. Poet EE Cummins never followed grammatical rules. He wrote his poetry in a disorderly fashion; words would be spread across the page for the reader to make sense of them. This allowed the reader to read the poem as they would like and craft their own meaning out of it.
Two, by situating ourselves in the author’s world. This approach allows the reader to explore the experience, perspective and sensibilities of the author in the author’s time. For example, the Constitution is read with the Constitution Assembly debates to give meaning to a text the the authors intended. The Puttaswamy judgment was only possible due to the purposefully open and vague structure of Article 21. By reading into such provision the intent of the authors, texts can significantly be altered.
But the author of the text often writes for an ‘ideal reader’ who is hypothetical and imaginary. The ideal reader is well-informed, competent and has an imagination of the author’s time and place. However, we are not all ideal readers and find our own ways to absorb a text. The intent of the text and its place in time and space is often not of any value.
While judgments, reports and legal commentaries constitute legal literature, they are so heavily and critically broken down that the space for the ideal reader diminishes. The construction of academic literature is constricted by the years of research scholars pour into it. The layman is at a loss for words; there is nothing more that he can say.
Books, stories, songs, cinema−such media speaks to all. It is literature that embodies social facts as understandable and relatable. But when one tells a life’s story, the story breathes and within it lives the author’s bias. There is an extensive discussion by Foucault and Roland Barthes on the death of the author once the text is in the hands of the reader. When issues as sensitive as ethics in law are addressed in literature, there must be a strangulation of the author. The author lives till he can. The reader must strive to be skeptical of the author’s narrative.
Law and ethics have a complex interaction. When literature deals with this complex interaction, the complexity of meaning is multiplied manifold. Critical reviews of literature are thus essential. In this essay, apart from looking at theory, we also look at stories that are seen as exemplary works all over the world. In an effort to break them down, there might be a hope to see clearer, beyond the manipulation of words.
Manipulation of the Law & its Machinery: The English Classic ‘Merchant of Venice’
English Literature is lauded for its grandiose presence in the literary world. We reference the works of Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. But it is also laden with moralistic views of the world. It is racist, sexist and presents a distorted image of other cultures of the world.
In the celebrated play “The Merchant of Venice”, we are faced with the grays of moral and ethical life. The fictional world of this play has led to the institutionalization of oppression in the real world. The oppression of individuals at a disadvantage has been portrayed to be effected through legally sanctioned means.
But the legal community resonates with Portia’s call for justice, speaks of the marvels of her wit and of Shylock’s cruelty. Oh, to demand a piece of flesh is grotesque. However, we fail to see Portia’s charade as a jurist as disturbing. She is invited by the court of law as an expert on the matter between Antonio and Shylock. Shylock begs to be paid; Antonio has breached the contract, after all.
Firstly, her bias knows no bounds. She is welcomed to the court as a man. Under false pretense, she passes for a renowned, well-read, expert in Venetian law by the name of Balthazar. For the Duke, his esteem is unparalleled. She corrupts the trial with her prejudiced and vindictive way of abusing power. The reader, in the pomp of the literature, forgets that Portia is racist, embraces the harsh, antisemitic statute and lets her abhorrence for the Jew community (which Shylock belongs to) seep through when she addresses the institutions of justice as an agent of law. Her conduct would have undermined the integrity of any judiciary had it not been a work of fiction. Bassanio is her lover and Antonio’s deep connection with him cannot percolate as gross bias into Portia’s assumed role.
This role was adversarial and instrumentalized to beseech Shylock to be merciful and kind. She pleads for ‘mercy’− a resort frowned upon by the law. In India, mercy is for the President to grant. How, in this case, Shylock has become the arbiter of law to decide what is ‘just’ and ‘fair’ is truly astounding. What is more astounding is the wide approval of the reader base.
Such gross disregard for due process threatens the confidence of the public in the judiciary’s integrity. Concealment of a conflict of interest is an ethical violation irreconcilable with the ideals of justice. When justice takes a step back, and virtues and morals occupy the center stage, a courtroom does become a drama. The intrusion of Portia as a partisan defender instead of an impartial actor has compromised the sterility of the courtroom.
At the end, Shylock was ordered to convert to Christianity. A Jewish man was forced to change his faith and beliefs because the judicial machinery allowed for the oppression of an already oppressed man seeking damages, arguably undue, for a promise unfulfilled.
Portia is undoubtedly transgressing social boundaries. A woman in a courtroom at her time would have been an atrocity. But deceit and appropriate of mechanisms is not the way for the expression of rights of any community. Manipulation is valorized in this case, and we see how law is malleable to such maneuvers without objection from laymen readers across the world.
Warmth & Humor: Misplacement of Virtues in Legal-Ethical Dillemas
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is one of the most celebrated works of fiction in the legal fraternity. Published in 1960, the novel is renowned for its warmth and humor. The themes it deals with include racial inequality and sexual abuse. There is a certain level of dissonance between the manner of presentation and the gravity of issues discussed.
In the story, Atticus Finch, going against all odds to fight a lost battle, embodies justice. He is a hero in the eyes of Scout Finch, a young girl. She tells the story as she sees it but we fail to observe that her narrative is heavily dominated by her unconditional regard for her father. He can do no wrong for he is nothing less than a superhero to little Scout.
We become receptors of a child’s account in this book, but as readers of a book that ensnares you with its page-turner plot, we terribly falter at scrutinizing Atticus Finch. It is highly usual that the reader finds it only right to feel the same way about the protagonist as the narrator does. When the narrator is a 7-year-old little girl, there is all the more reason to rely on her innocence and first-hand experience because children can do no foul.
By no means is this a suggestion that Harper Lee placed a child at the center stage as a manipulation tactic. However, it is an iteration of the idea that narratives are easy to get lost in. One may find oneself rooting for a robber in a movie because the background tells us where they come from, why they were compelled to do this and how systemic flaws necessitate criminal wrongs. While some of these narratives are very loud and clear, others are more subtle and work behind the curtains. Regardless, as audience, any story that is put before us must be looked at as a fabrication of multiple perspectives, creative processes and dramatic influences. Reader/viewer skepticism is essential when critically analyzing morals and ethics in law.
In the story, Tom Robinson, a black man, is accused of raping a white woman, Mayella. Despite Atticus’ strong defense of Tom Robinson, he is sentenced to death in the end. Steven Lubet goes to the extent of saying that no real-life lawyer has done as much as Atticus Finch has done for the public perception of the legal profession. Now, the same has become a moral archetype. It is a reference within the legal fraternity; people often say, “Lawyers don’t only serve the rich and the influential. There are some Atticus Finches left in the world.”
But Lubet also demonstrates why Atticus Finch is not an icon or a beacon of enlightenment. The picture Atticus paints is one that shames the victim. In open society, he claims that Mayella was in love with Tom Robinson, and that her love for a black man was a matter of shame for her. The fabric of the tale is deeply rooted in suspecting the woman’s experience.
In this, Atticus also reads into Mayella’s testimony that no white woman could consent to a black man’s touch. But since Mayella was a woman of loose character, she would often call him in for chores, seduce him and the day of the incident, she was the one who wanted to be intimate with Tom. He painted her portrait in black and white, leaving no space for Mayella’s greys.
Atticus left us with an image of Mayella as a sexually frustrated, love-starved aggressor who is hiding from the world because no morally upright woman would act like her. But Atticus also seeded into the minds of other young women a fear they should not know−the fear of being ripped apart on the stand. The purpose of a trial is to resolve competing narrative. However, every attorney is expected to operate within the limited ethics of an insensitive system. The ‘she wanted it’ defense is not only taken in poor taste, but also alters history, both procedurally and substantively. The chilling effect cast on other women of all time is discounted.
It is not true that advocacy would mean nothing if it does not bring out the truth, no matter how painful. When seasoned courtroom warriors advocate for rapists in court, we do not see display of extraordinary advocacy but of the oppression of the oppressed. We fail to appreciate the consistency is Mayella’s testimony and have unconditional positive regard for Scout and Atticus Finch.
Dragging the victim through the mud for the sole purpose of freeing the guilty can either be motivated by material gains or strong moral positions. If the motivations arise from the former, the courtroom is corrupted. If it comes from the latter, then paternalism will inevitably overshadow reason.
Stories like these, where the Mayellas of the world are scheming, plotting, vicious women not in control of their sexual desires, pathologize the victims of sexual assault. Trial lawyers act as the ultimate positivists, concerned mainly about what the law allows, they wonder little over the meaning of virtue. They create mistrust in the general public and create a judicial hunger for corroborated testimony. Projecting rape as a fantasy for a woman is not only a shameful suggestion to make but also a matter of collective failure of the community.
When sensitive matters are trivialized by perversion through emotions, all sight is lost. When that emotion is dominantly one of innocence, it is hard to locate any sin in it. What is easier to locate is naivete, but it is highly unlikely that a pleasurable read will allow for such analytical reduction. Texts that go on to become classics often overlook the subjects they deal with, and how they shape public perception.
Law is a gated community for professionals. The family next door fails to comprehend the nuances and intricacies of a courtroom. They look for a battle to entertain them, with blacks and whites and rights and wrongs. Once judgments and other legal texts enter into the realm of meaningful literature, a certain respect is accorded to the discipline by the author. None of this is to say that stories that touch the heart must be carefully curated so as to avoid any misconceptions about reality. The argument here is that the reader must rigorously critique the author when they can. Once such critique is in the public eye, whether it is widely read or not, there is an acknowledgment of the author’s biases. The author does not die, remains alive and concomitantly, their stories become accounts of real people. Such accounts become easier to scrutinize. The curtain of morality can only fall once the author is a person and not an abstract entity. When the curtain falls, the ethics of life and discipline easily become spectators of the show. In such a controlled audience, the words become susceptible to judgment and suspicion.
It is imperative that literature that interacts with law is looked at critically. Donning an intersubjective and interdisciplinary lens may allow for a more meaningful enjoyment of such stories without creating false impressions that leave imprints year after year in classrooms and reading circles all around the world.
Cinema As Literature: Optics Matter
Literature is not only limited to the written word but also extends to cinema and other media of expression. Ocular drama has a more long-lasting impact on the human mind than a narrative spelt out on paper. The construction of criminality, especially, in cinema is one that has interested many legal scholars. One brilliant example is how, through cinema, people view Veerappan in the movie, ‘Killing Veerappan’.
Veerappan does not have a charming reputation, and rightly so in some contexts. But he has been sculpted by Indian cinema as a man of no moral character. For the audience, he becomes the man who kills his daughter, so the police do not catch him, in case the baby cries. In the movie, an absolutely radical narrative unfolds. He is showcased as an eccentric criminal with no regard for the forest or his family. He is a smuggler, a killer, a misogynist and a barbarian.
What constructs Veerappan is not history but his moustache (a signifier of his wrath), his deviant facial expressions (pathologizing his criminal nature) and everything around him. No one can prove the veracity of the tall claims the movie makes. Ram Gopal Varma, in the beginning of the film, presents us with the ‘caveat’, “This is the truth as I know it.” But the caveat loses its value once he proclaims his second-hand lived experience as the ‘truth’.
In John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’, he elaborates how the process of seeing is less natural than we tend to believe. Perspective makes appearances and appearances make reality. Everything around an image or a text is part of its meaning. So, when Veerappan was placed, not in a serene forest, but in a tumultuous jungle with knives and guns surrounding him, a stranger could not have perceived him as a man with a big moustache. There, he becomes a man who will most likely kill half a dozen people. The ‘becoming’ from a lanky man with quirky walk to one of the most dangerous men on the planet is not a work of history nor of the audience, it is purely strung together through manipulated perception.
The book, ‘Birds, Beasts and Bandits: 14 Days with Veerappan’, is written by two photojournalists who were mistakenly taken as his prisoner. After 14 days, they were set free. Their experience is consolidated in this book. The two authors, Krupakar and Senani, tell us that they were astonished at the knowledge Veerappan had of the forest, that he had deep concern for the forest and was thoroughly aware of the affairs of the country and the world. Veerappan’s character sketch in the book is anti-thetical to movie. What is striking from the perspective of law is the questionable means adapted by the police force in putting an end to Veerappan’s ‘atrocities’. The movie exhibits several violations of the law, an executive overreach and a license to the law-enforcing machinery to adopt torturous means to attain their goals.
The exoticization and demonization of tribes is prohibited by law and is disrespectful to communities the mainstream media knows little to near about. How this percolates into the morals and ethics of a legal professional who consumes such media is unimaginable. The bias and the fear such movies entrench, by virtue of being easy to consume, is highly problematic. We see more instances of subversion of law with such narratives gaining traction.
On the other hand, films like 12 Angry Men, restore faith in the adversarial and judicial system. Twelve men with twelve strong heads enter the jury room. None agrees with none. Yet they leave the room with their conscience clear, and pretense loosened. The pursuit of truth is one where all assumed morals and self-righteousness needs to be left at the door. Without this crucial step, the pursuit will be doomed from the get-go. The twelve angry men in this film are not simply men, but every member of the society who sees themselves as insignificant, small and unseen. It is nothing out of the ordinary for one to believe that ‘My one deed cannot make a difference’. But slow simmering and stripping away of preconceived notions, when combined with group efforts, actively makes them a part of the system they believed they never were a part of.
Conclusion
In exploring the intersection of law, ethics, and narrative, it becomes evident that literature offers a unique lens through which ethical understanding and consciousness are shaped. As Roland Barthes aptly put it, “Text is a tissue of citation resulting from a thousand sources of culture.” This perspective is crucial in recognizing how literature, in both its individual and collective dimensions, contributes to ethical discourse.
In a culture driven by efficiency and speed, where narratives are often consumed for quick closure and satisfaction, there is immense value in engaging with literature that resists easy resolutions. Works like Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and Mann’s The Magic Mountain exemplify this, as they immerse readers in a world where characters and narrators grapple with uncertainty and incomplete understanding. Such novels invite readers to inhabit a space of ambiguity and reflection, fostering a recognition of the limits of self-knowledge—an essential aspect of ethical consciousness.
This recognition is particularly important in an age where the narratives we construct about ourselves often serve to pin down meaning and justify our actions, even when they do not align with our ethical beliefs. The dissonance between intention and action can lead to unethical behaviour, a point underscored by the reassurance some readers find in novels like Infinite Jest, which, despite its dark themes, resonates with readers’ inner thoughts and feelings, helping them feel less alienated.
However, the individualistic focus of modern realist novels, which typically center on the moral adventures of a single character, raises significant ethical questions. This shift reflects a broader conflation of ethics and politics, where the ethical is increasingly seen through the lens of individual identity rather than collective responsibility.
This trend towards individualism in literature mirrors the neoliberal emphasis on personal experience and unique perspectives. While such focus is valuable, it risks undermining the potential for collective action and solidarity, which are crucial in addressing global challenges. The challenge for literature, then, is to move beyond narratives that solely emphasize the individual and instead explore stories that consider crowds, communities, and non-human entities. In this context, science fiction and television, with their capacity to depict interconnected, interdependent worlds, might be better suited to awaken readers to the necessity of collective understanding and action.
Moreover, the act of reading itself—especially a diverse range of literature—plays a crucial role in shaping one’s ethical perspective. Exposure to different narratives and characters fosters a habit of reflection and moderation, preparing readers to navigate the complexities of real-life ethical situations. While Aristotle emphasized the importance of action in cultivating virtue, the formative experience of reading can similarly contribute to ethical development by encouraging readers to critically engage with the world around them.
Nevertheless, there is a tension between the instrumental use of literature for ethical instruction and the appreciation of its literary qualities. Focusing solely on extracting moral lessons from novels risks reducing them to mere vehicles for ethical propositions, neglecting their aesthetic and formal elements. Instead, literature’s ethical potential lies in its ability to embrace ambiguity and avoid definitive conclusions, inviting readers to revel in uncertainty and explore the complexities of human experience without necessarily seeking clear-cut answers.
Thus, literature serves not only as a mirror to individual psyches but also as a tool for collective ethical reflection, challenging readers to think beyond themselves and consider the broader implications of their actions within a shared, interconnected world. This dual role of literature—shaping both individual and collective ethical consciousness—reinforces its significance in contemporary society and its potential to inspire a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the moral complexities we face.