STAND YOUR GOUND AND #'S 3-2 OF GREATEST AMERICAN NOVEL.

SYG:  A very nice win for the PDs office on a petition for a writ of prohibition (the proper way to appeal pre-trial the denial of a stand your ground immunity motion). APD Susan Lerner, Esq gets the win for the PDs. Judge Rebull reversed. FYI: It was a 2-1 win with Judge Salter in a learned dissent that quite frankly we would have expected to carry the day at the 3rd DCA (deferring to a trial judge's findings of facts and all that.) Mobley v. State, here. 

#3-#2 GREATEST AMERICAN NOVEL:
Numbers 3 and 2 on our list are  Catcher In The Rye, by J.D. Salinger, and  To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. 

Both Novels were written by authors who don't have a large body of work for which they are remembered, other than their masterpiece. In that sense, you can pick which is two and which is three. They are interchangeable on this list. If forced, we would rank Catcher third and Mockingbird second. 

Of the two novels, Holden Caulfield is perhaps the more unique fictional character and the writing style and subject- teen age angst and coming of age are more unique to the top ten list than the subject in Mockingbird. Salinger, like more than one author on the list, saw active duty in war, landing on Utah Beach at D-Day, and fighting in a combat role through the Battle of the Bulge. There is some criticism to Catcher: the character never matures. He is at the end of the novel the same way he began. Also, the writing is very dated, which makes Catcher a period piece. There is no relationship between the experiences of a teen-age Caulfield that would or could possibly compare to the experiences of a teenager today. Yet, the novel is uniquely American. No other culture could produce a Holden Caulfield. 

To Kill A Mockingbird is the personification of the classic American Novel. Only one novel tops it, and as we will shortly explain, we awarded that Novel top spot because not only of the genius of the Novel, but the author's body of work gave it the ever so slight edge over Mockingbird and Catcher. The brilliance of Mockingbird is the way in which the Novel highlights the great strengths of America and its darkest shame. Only America could produce an Atticus Finch, with the heroic qualities to speak up and defend a black man in the deep south circa 1930. Is there any more powerful line in a book then Tom Robinson, a black man, testifying that he felt sorry for Mayelia Ewell, a white woman? The distinction between the hard working and honest man (who is black) and the trashy woman from a slacker family whose father Bob Ewell is the town drunk (but who are white) is pure genius. That the jury must believe the white woman over the black man is a foregone conclusion in the deep south.  The fact that Finch proves Ewell a liar by showing that one of Robinson's arms- the arm that Ewell said Robinson used to choke her- is lame from a tractor accident- just highlights the clash between racism, culture, and the constitution that existed in the country for the better part of 150 years. And what to make of Boo Radley? Ahh, we save that for the high-school term paper, of which there are probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of them written on the subject. That the reclusive Boo saves Atticus's children and kills Bob Ewell in the process ties the novel up in a sweet ending. 

So now all that is left is which Novel is number one? 

Happy New Year and welcome back. See You In Court in a few weeks.* 


* Rumpole's second rule of trials: never ever ever let a case be set for the first week of January.