Trust, credibility, and injustice › A Literary Case, Not a Historical Trial

Fricker examines Tom Robinson's trial in Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Robinson is a Black defendant whose testimony is assessed through racial prejudice. This is a literary example, not a historical case study. In Fricker's discussion, the narrative gives the reader grounds to recognize his innocence while the jury fails to respond appropriately to the evidence.

The jury's epistemic failure is central to her interpretation. She asks us to understand the jurors as reaching a genuinely prejudiced judgment, rather than privately accepting Robinson's innocence and deliberately convicting him anyway. Both possibilities would involve grave injustice, but they would differ in mechanism. The first corrupts the hearers' assessment of a speaker. The second involves knowingly acting against an assessment already reached.

The distinction helps clarify the book's target. A person need not formulate an explicit policy of discrimination for prejudice to shape what they find credible. At the same time, a theory of prejudiced judgment does not automatically cover every deliberate attempt to silence another person. Identifying one mechanism of injustice should help us distinguish other mechanisms, rather than erase them.