May 2002

Proud to Be a Lawyer 

Seattle University School of Law Commencement Address; December 22, 2001 

by Randolph I. Gordon

"Lawyers' idea of listening is waiting for their turn to speak." I claim no exception for myself. The class of 2001 will forever be linked to these challenging days and times. I have not struggled to find words to share, but to find a pathway through those words which have jostled with one another to find expression. As the expected duration of my comments is about six semesters, I have arranged to have law degrees conferred on everyone in the room. There is first, however, the small matter of tuition.

I hope I may be forgiven if, given these times, I speak to you earnestly, from the heart, without levity, under this precedent: that the one bottle of champagne that is never consumed is that smashed upon the bow of the ship as it is being launched. Things were so clear when your singular purpose was to complete that which you started, but now it is foggy. Part of the problem is not of your own making: shipbuilding is different than navigation. While law school has trained you for command, it has not done such a good job of giving you a mission or a moral compass. These you must provide. It has given you the tools of a carpenter, but not told you what to build.

Where does a sense of justice begin? In your heart; in the values imparted to you by your friends, families and community; and in your conscience. It is, after all, the touchstone of individual conscience that is at the heart of the Rules of Professional Conduct that guide our profession. Lawyers provide the justice. The power and risk of a legal education is that it sharpens you, and in the rigor and sacrifice it calls for, it results in an estrangement between you and yourself. Just as the foxholes of World War I can still be seen as scars on the fields of France, graduation from law school becomes a demarcation in your lives: In the Year of our Law School One.

Some of you have gone through law school at great personal and financial sacrifice — placing personal lives, relationships and plans on hold. The time has come for respiration, for inspiration.

I speak to you of three guiding principles, or buoys, which mark out the trackless, fogbound seas. There are three astonishing mysteries of human existence which can serve as markers that guide you to the deep channels of lives well lived that are a credit to our profession, our community and our humanity.

The first of these is the principle of simultaneity, the knowledge that as we celebrate today, there are others who are suffering. For us this is a day of celebration — for others a day of mourning. Today is for us a day of peace — for others a day of war. In the Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang, we see in the bright heart of celebration the shadow of despair; we eat while others starve. According to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, the average American consumes 260 pounds of meat annually compared to 6.5 pounds for the average Bangladeshi. Do you feel you are 40 times more worthy? What makes us worthy to receive this gift and opportunity? Nothing.

This is the simple logic of saying grace. People try to isolate themselves from this knowledge — not to notice that by 2050, eight billion of the 9.5 billion people on this planet will be in the developing world. But let's consider our world today. In the developing world, three-fifths of its people lack safe sewers, one-third safe water; 20 percent lack access to any modern medical services at all. They aspire to the abuse we receive from HMOs.

This is a message of knowledge. This burden must be with you as long as there is injustice and hunger in the world. I cannot spare you this knowledge. The question is not how can you live knowing this, it is how can you live not knowing this?

The second guiding principle or buoy in your life's voyage is that of our essential connectedness to our fellow man. This is the basis of our duty. This is the explanation of the laudable ritual of the Passover seder, where for each of the plagues visited upon Pharaoh, a drop of wine is removed from the glass. Our pleasures must be diminished by our essential connectedness to the despairs of humankind. So it is that one of the Five Pillars of Islam is Zakat, the giving to the needy; in Jewish tradition it is Tzedakim. It is what John Donne understood when he wrote: "No man is an island entire to itself.…Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."1

If you wear shoes, sleep under a roof, have eaten in the last eight hours and have the prospect of a meal in the next eight hours, you are one of the wealthiest people on the planet. As one of the one percent who are lawyers — educated and trained in the switches and levers of power, you are among the most powerful people on earth. Who shall do the work? If not you, who? Shall we call upon migrant laborers, illegal immigrants, refugees? Shall we leave it to the Taliban, the al-Qaida, the farmers of the lowlands in Bangladesh periodically threatened by flood? The foundation of all ethics is that one's moral duty is commensurate with one's power. So, what then shall I expect of you, the most powerful people in the world — little or much?

The third principle is that of choice and renewal, the fact that with every moment of life we are blessed with a rebirth of our choice as to how to live that moment and this moment. Life is many moments; this is one of them — one of the best, pregnant with hope and possibility. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit philosopher and scientist, said: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience." This is a message of hope. If you heed these principles, these buoys, you will head out to the deep seas and do the work of humanity.

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.2

There is also a siren leading you to the shallows: compound interest. Radix malorum est cupitas; the root of all evil is avarice. Do not let your interest in interest blind you. Our creature comforts and pursuit of things of this world blind us to the true experience that flows from our knowledge of the suffering of others, our duty as human beings arising from our essential connectedness, our power and our choice.

Some have dedicated their lives to the accumulation of wealth. Ask the greater community, your friends and family whether they would prefer you to line your own pockets and walk around chortling about how you are self-made men and women, or to contribute to the community? For people who choose the former, let these words appear on their tombstones: "They accumulated wealth; they died with more than they could use; they ate to excess while those around them starved." What would we think of a human being who said, "My life's purpose is the maximization of profit"? It is despicable. Yet we tolerate this from some of our corporate citizens. What does this lead to? Layoffs on Christmas Eve to boost profits to shareholders. It is written in Mark 8: 35-36: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life…shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul."

Law is not only hard work, it is "heart" work. The Koyukon peoples of North America tell us of Raven, the trickster who changed rivers from flowing in different directions on opposite banks to flowing one direction because it was not right that people should be able to go where they wanted to go without paddling.

Do you not know where your work is?

It is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education and health care, reproductive health care, adequate food, clean water and safe sewers is less than four percent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world. The richest three people in the world have more wealth than the 48 poorest nations.

I tell you this: cynicism is a dead end. It neither inspires nor commands respect, nor does it call upon our inner resources to do better.

Last year I spoke of moments of reflection, of taking account of ourselves. But the world is changed. We do not have time for reflection; we need action. The sense of the Hebrew tikun olam, healing the world, speaks to this. We live in a world where there is work to be done. We need you to do some of it.

NOTES

1. John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation 17.

2. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act IV, Sc. iii.