Dr. Suneel Mehmi (LLB, LLM, PhD & Published Academic Author in Law and Literature)
05.10.2026
In my analysis of King Solomon’s legal judgement, which you can download as a short booklet on my ‘About’ page, I wrote about how this legal icon was a liar. How the law is supported by lies. Fiction. Untruth. Sleight of hand and deception. The legal hero of the West is a liar. The lie, it will be noted, was to go against a woman. And for exposing this truth? They had no place for me in Western academia. Funnily enough, in a world of stench and corruption, the truth teller and the one who cares for justice is not supported.
The judgement of Solomon is not just the root of Western law. The figure of the King Solomon legal hero permeates the whole jurisprudential structure. This is the inheritance of Western law. We can see it in the fictional legal heroes of the West, from Victorian times to more modern literature. The legal heroes of the West are all liars. And the lies oppose women. The law is a misogynistic lie.
- Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Impersonates Charles Darney to deceive the French legal system and to have himself executed by guillotine. Here we have this lie which actually subverts the legal process and justice. Note that the lie thwarts a woman, Madame Defarge who thirsts for justice and revenge against the class that Charles Darnay represents. The lie is an evasion of the justice of a woman. And the result? Sydney Carton is celebrated in Western culture as is his final speech in the novel. He even figures as a hero in philosophy, as a ‘secular Christ figure’.
- Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This supposed legal inspiration lies at the end of the novel so that Boo Radley is not imprisoned for killing Bob Ewell. Rather unconvincingly, he agrees that Bob Ewell fell on his knife. Note that Bob Ewell represents his daughter who lied to make up a rape case to prosecute an innocent, Tom Robinson. Bob Ewell represents a woman’s voice and place in the law (where she can only be seen as a liar). Therefore, one can surmise that the lie of Atticus Finch (The Father in the novel, and The Father as The Law) is attempting to oppose a ‘lying’ women’s justice with its own lies. There is a competition for the law, for untruth and deception. The concept is of woman as deception and the law wants to be deception. And the result? Atticus is an inspiration for men to go to law school in this legal culture of injustice and lies.
- Elle in ‘Legally Blonde’ by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith
Elle impersonates a lawyer to get her friend Paulette’s dog back from Rufus. She makes made up legal threats to Rufus to intimidate him and presents a fiction about common-law marriage and property rights. Obviously, Elle is a woman law student that becomes a lawyer in the movie and she is representing a woman, Paulette. The misogyny of the law is embodied in Elle: she is a lying woman. She is deception. Obviously, Elle takes on misogyny and prosecutes Chutney Windham in the murder trial, who she exposes as a liar (since, according to legal logic, women are liars and woman herself is deception). And the result? Elle is an inspiration for women to go to law school in this legal culture of injustice and lies.
How can you expect any justice in a legal culture which celebrates the lie and liars? How can you expect any justice in a culture of legal misogyny? These are the legal heroes of this culture. These are the fictional characters that are driving students to go to law school in the first place, as anyone that knows anything about Elle and Atticus would know. This is what this culture worships. The lack of reality in law. The lack of reality in personhood. The covering up of the truth to achieve an end.
