Film director Reginald Hudlin and Ernest W. McFarland professor of law Deborah Rhode discussed Hudlin’s new film, “Marshall,” at a Stanford Law School-sponsored panel moderated by Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education Harry Elam in Cubberley Auditorium on Tuesday night.

“Marshall,” a legal drama officially in theaters starting Friday, Oct. 13, follows then-NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall’s successful 1940 defense of Joseph Spell, a black man falsely accused of raping his white, female employer.

“[Thurgood Marshall is the] kind of leader that we so sorely need today,” said Rhode, who clerked for the associate Supreme Court justice from 1978-79. “[We need] his great sense of justice and … his enormous humanity … the way he dealt with everyone. He understood all of the petty indignities and massive injustices that constituted race relations and he brought that to his work.”

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“[Justice] Marshall said that would be fine as long as it would portray him accurately, in livery and knee breeches, holding the tray,” Rhode said.