UC Hastings College of Law Commencement Address
Greetings Dean Kane, Hastings professors, and to the families and friends of graduates. Congratulations!
I must first say that it is a great honor to address the Hastings College of the Law Class of 2005.
I suppose I’m here because I was sitting where you are about fifteen years ago. But I’m also here because we know that there are solid, though not always apparent, connections between the practice of law in general and the work of the criminal justice system in particular. Both of these, of course, have the concept of justice as their foundation.
But first let me begin by acknowledging the horribly wonderful experience you’ve had over the course of the last three years. You entered this place with outstanding LSAT scores, and had your first hands-on look at our glorious school in the Tenderloin. You endured hours upon hours of lectures, the 60+ Club, beers on the beach and the grueling rigor of on-campus interviews in black and blue suits, white shirts.
And now you sit next to each other as one body that is bonded by common experience and ready to make your mark on the world. Okay, let’s be real, you’re dreading the fact that BarBri classes start in only a few days. You’re thinking, “Dear God, please just let me pass the bar.”
Let that go for a moment; you will pass the bar. That’s what
In your newfound position as an attorney, you will have the opportunity to pursue many paths.
Regardless of whether you wind up in a courtroom, a boardroom, a conference room or a classroom. Regardless of whether you make your mark in the halls of the Legislature or on the board of a non-profit. Whether you chose to represent General Motors or a homeless person on General Assistance. Regardless of how you choose to practice law, you will play a vital role.
Think of all the great women and men who, armed with a law degree, redefined the conditions of millions of lives. Think of Thurgood Marshall, Robert Kennedy, Sarah Wedstone, Dale Minami, Mahatma Gandhi. The greatness of these people probably inspired a number of you to go to law school. For everyone here they represent not just the heroes of our profession, but of history as well.
So as lawyers, as stewards of the law, and as guardians of the principles beneath it, we expect that you will be great. But this is not to say that you will not face some tough choices. Choices that are tough because, grounded in them, is the issue how you will use the power newly vested in you. How you will make real the oath that commits each one of us to defend those inalienable rights that are at the foundation of our laws—inalienable rights that essentially realize the implicit promise of justice.
This is our greatest work: making that promise real.
Being an advocate for justice is what deeply sustains me. I love being a lawyer.
However, being an effective advocate for justice is not simple. It requires seeing a whole picture that is not usually immediately recognizable, not just individual pieces of the puzzle.
For example, when a homeless person commits a crime, is justice achieved at the point when I charge him or her with the crime and therefore hold him or her accountable? When does justice happen?
Certainly, this is one step in the process. But I think that justice truly occurs when I also understand how she wound up on the streets. How the system works with her to rebuild her life so that she—and our community—is free from crime.
To do the work of justice means a commitment to holistic problem solving. In my own practice I am constantly asking myself, “Am I missing something? Am I seeing how the pieces of the puzzle fit together?”
To help me gain perspective, there is an Indian parable I think about all the time.
It takes place in ancient
One feels the side of the beast and decides the elephant is a great wall he can use for protection in battle. Another feels the tusk and decides the elephant is a great spear that can be used as a weapon. A man feels the tail and decides it is a strong rope that can be used to capture enemies.
Limited to one aspect of the thing that is in front of him, each man refused the explanation of the others. The argument never ended and not one of them realized that he could simply ride the elephant into battle.
The lesson that I take from this parable is that we cannot find the way to a solution without seeing the whole picture, the true nature of the whole. That we have to stretch our vision, to ask the tough questions, and to make connections between the actual, not just the apparent, pieces of the problem is how to conquer problems.
This parable also speaks to how we currently approach our thought process as lawyers. Our law schools teach us to think in compartments. To analyze whether a legal problems involves a tort, a contract, a crime or a copyright infringement. We’re taught to condense issues into one of two procedures—civil or criminal. Then we are taught to find and apply the latest court decision that we call “on point”
These are great teaching tools, but real life, real people, real clients are not so easily compartmentalized. I promise you that not one of them will up an attorney crying, “I have a legal problem because of the rule against perpetuities!”
Instead, they come to us with a messy situation that has to be sorted out. If we only see a small part of the story, the remedy we propose may well be short of the proper solution
Let us see the issues when the connections are not obvious, even in some cases when they are counterintuitive. Let us, as lawyers, see the hidden connections; the connections that make these human issues that individual clients will come to you with. And especially let us see these connections because our most demanding client, the struggle for justice requires that we recognize them.
I often talk about the antiquated categories created for judging the efficacy of the criminal justice system: whether we are tough on crime or soft on crime. I believe that the better way of looking at it, the way that addresses the whole issue, is to be smart on crime. As a start, I suggest that law enforcement recognize that its responsibility is to stretch beyond simply moving criminals off the street and into jails.
In approaching this goal, I think that a reappraisal of our criminal justice system is in order. A methodology such as that which we use in considering issues pertaining to pubic health could be adopted as a means of reducing violence. By treating the incidence of violence as an epidemic, attorneys, doctors, and law enforcement officials can all work together to design solutions that encompass crime prevention as well as suppression. Necessarily this implies that early intervention and treatment for youth already caught in the justice system be used.
Should we not recognize that if we are to stop being victimized by crime, then we must make the connection between the incidence of crime and that which causes it? Crime prevention is the key to understanding that the application of justice requires that we look beyond the first thing that we see to imagine the potential of what could be.
This country was not created based on lines between rivers and mountains, nor because of old tribal rivalries. It was created because of our founders’ ability to imagine, and to make real, the promise the promise of liberty. Because of this lawyers had a hand in crafting our very definition as a nation that is governed not by men, but by law. And still there is no greater work as lawyers than to achieve the potential inherent in our country and its laws.
In my own work I grapple with the precarious nature of finding a balance in my work between keeping
These same tensions are played out nationally as well. In the post-9/11 world, questions of civil liberty versus public safety are raised constantly and framed in the language of patriotism. But let us remember that one of our greatest patriots, Benjamin Franklin, said, “They, that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Patriotism means precisely that no one has the right to hijack definitions of morality or justice. No one who truly believes in the greatness of our country wants to live with absolute confidence in his or her safety, but at the cost of all civil liberties. Everyone one of us, when we swear to take a stand to uphold the fundamental and constitutional rights of every American citizen, is accomplishing the truest ideal of American patriotism.
Each of you in this room will have the ability to participate in helping to change this society into what it can be. Fifteen years ago as I was sitting where you are not, I couldn’t wait to get started and I know you feel the same way. I wish that you could see what I see right now.
I see a room filled with hope, with promise, and with possibility. I cannot wait to see what each of you, as a member of the Hastings Class of 2005, will do next. It is truly my honor to be included in this wonderful day.