What is Your Trial Theme? To Kill a Mockingbird

 

A PERSUASIVE STORY for trial has all of the same ELEMENTS of a MOVIE SCRIPT

We are going to the movies for lessons about trial advocacy. 

We are exploring how a persuasive story for trial will have the elements of a good movie script. A good movie has a good theme, and the same goes for your trial story. 

A good theme is one that sums up what the case is about—This “case is about ____” Ten years after their jury service if asked what the case was about, they will recite your theme. A good theme crystallizes the human values and needs of your trial story. It is a hook the jurors remember

The following are common trial themes:

• Power and control

• Accountability

• A uniform is only as good as the man or woman who wears it

• Innocents don’t conspire

• Trust and betrayal of trust 

Themes are essential to storytelling.  Movie advertising tag lines can provide excellent jumping off points for coming up with trial themes:

• “With great power comes great responsibility.” (Spiderman) 

• “It was the Deltas against the rules… the rules lost!” (Animal House) 

• “Somewhere, somehow, someone’s going to pay.” (Commando) 

• “The truth is out there.” (The X-Files) 

• “There are degrees of truth.” (Basic) 

• “He was never in time for his classes… He wasn’t in time for his dinner… Then one day he wasn’t in his time at all.”

(Back to the Future) 

• “He’s out to prove he’s got nothing to prove.” (Napoleon Dynamite) 

• “The truth can be adjusted.” (Michael Clayton) 

• “In the heart of the nation’s capital, in a courthouse of the U.S. government, one man will stop at nothing to keep his honor, and one will stop at nothing to find the truth.” (A Few Good Men) 

• “Some people would kill for love.” (Presumed Innocent)

• “Some people will do anything for money.” (The Fortune Cookie)

• “The first scream was for help. The second is for justice.” (The Accused) 

To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960. the Library Journal named it the best novel of the century. Seldom does the movie match up to the book upon which it is based, – but, in this case, it does. The 25th in the American Film Institute named it the greatest movie of all time and named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.

The phrase “to kill a mockingbird serves as a great example of a theme because it encapsulates what the story—the movie is all about.

Watch how the theme is introduced early on in the movie.