by Ben Darche
One of most critically acclaimed television dramas on the air right
now is Mad Men, now in its third season on AMC. Set in early 1960’s
New York City, the show depicts a fictional advertising agency –
Sterling Cooper – and its employees. The show, however, is about much
more than the ad business, operating on a variety of cultural levels,
with the all-white and nearly all-male agency executives mostly
oblivious to seismic cultural shifts unfolding all around them, with
the button-downed 1950’s giving rise to the civil rights and
counter-cultural era of the 1960s. For instance, in one recent
episode, the show’s protagonist, Don Draper, turns off the radio in
the middle of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, seemingly
unaware of its significance or at the very least simply uninterested
in its importance.
One of the running themes in Mad Men is the moral detachment of many
of its main characters, Don Draper being the prime example. Don, a
self-made man from a hardscrabble and mysterious background, seems to
have all of the physical things one could want in life – a great
career, money, a beautiful wife and children – and yet it’s quite
apparent to the viewer that he coasts through his life with a numb
detachment, each day devoid of any sort of joy or, above all, a sense
of morality and purpose.
I mention all of this because I was reminded of the parallels between
Don Draper’s world and the perception of lawyers throughout history.
When discussing the sheer awesomeness of the show with a friend of
mine, he remarked, “Yo, you know what would make Don Draper even more
believable? If he were a lawyer.”
Indeed. Mad Men may be set in an old world of cars with tail fins and
mid-morning cocktails, but its cultural resonance is applicable to our
modern legal world. The lack of morality and basic empathy on display
by many of the show’s main characters conforms to much of the general
public’s conception of lawyers and the legal profession. As professor
Thane Rosenbaum has pointed out in his speeches, lectures, and his
book The Myth of Moral Justice, outsiders often view the law as cold,
analytical, and overly concerned with formal procedures and processes
over truth-seeking and storytelling. Lawyers, in their quest to win
cases on behalf of their clients, often overlook basics that a normal,
caring person would not – an outcome where the client feels that
justice has actually been done rather than damages secured, for
example. Ensuring the defendant apologizes and realizes the gravity
of his wrong rather than simply trying to increase his jail time.
Stop worrying about legalistic rules like “proximate cause” and
measures like “mens rea” and start worrying about whether your client
was wronged, and how, and how to best deliver on the justice he or she
is seeking.
The law is rarely concerned with human dignity and honor, but it’s
something all of us understand. When we’ve been wronged, even the
most lawyerly among us is likely to want to reclaim that sense of
honor and pride that the courtroom too often deems irrelevant to the
outcome of the case. It’s why we all associate with revenge in movies
and television shows. And it’s why “an eye for an eye” – an ancient
expression rooted in measurement – still holds relevance today.
Mad Men’s beauty is that though it’s a television show unrelated to
the legal world on a surface level, it explores many of the themes
that the law dismisses as barbaric and useless. When Don Draper
persistently cheats on his wife and she begins to discover it, it
crushes her soul and her sense of pride in all that she’s worked for –
him, her children, the entire life she’s built – and yet he rarely
apologizes, and never listens when she tries to tell him how much it’s
killing her (spiritually, of course). In that sense, he and the legal
system we’re all so familiar with have much in common; justice simply
isn’t done when a bouquet of flowers is all you have to show for the
fact that you’re sorry.
