[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 149 (Thursday, December 1, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: December 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                    GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, earlier this year, I had the honor to give 
the commencement address to the class of 1994 of the Georgetown 
University Law Center.
  The address was given on a beautiful spring day on the main campus of 
Georgetown University in Washington. It was a most meaningful day for 
my wife and myself because 30 years before, I had graduated from 
Georgetown with a law degree but was unable to attend the graduation 
because I had returned to Vermont to begin my clerkship in preparation 
for admission to the Vermont Bar.
  Both my wife Marcelle and I talked later about how Georgetown had 
finally given me the graduation I had waited 30 years for, and the 
gratitude felt for that opportunity.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a text of my remarks at 
Georgetown be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 Humanity and Service Are Formative Principles for a Successful Legal 
                                 Career

       It was 30 years ago that I had the opportunity to sit where 
     you are today. I had been inspired by the knowledge that was 
     gained at this magnificent law school and I was confident of 
     my sharply honed reasoning skills. After all, I had survived 
     the unmerciful pounding of my law professors, these olympian 
     Gods of this institution, and I was surrounded by friends 
     that were going to last me a lifetime. And my generation had 
     been inspired by another young president. He had called on 
     the privileged, which included a lot of us, to serve the 
     underprivileged. He lifted us all in the cause of civil 
     rights. He encouraged us to dedicate ourselves to democratic 
     principles. It was Camelot and it was a brief shining moment 
     in our history. So I remember these years at Georgetown.
       But in the many years since, the thing I remember most was 
     standing with my wife on a cold November day in my last year 
     of law school--standing on Pennsylvania Avenue with a half a 
     million people so silent you could literally hear the lights 
     click as they changed on the stoplights, and standing near 
     where the law school was at that time we heard the drums as 
     the cortege left the White House bringing the body of John 
     Kennedy up Pennsylvania Avenue. Any one of us who were there 
     will never forget that day, and we knew the future wasn't as 
     structured or predictable as an idealistic young law student 
     had imagined.
       When I graduated from Georgetown Law School I didn't have 
     the chance to sit here and listen to a graduation speaker. I 
     missed my own commencement exercises. I had to rush home to 
     Vermont, start work, start a clerkship. Marcelle and I packed 
     up our worldly possessions in a rented car, bundled up our 
     infant son, and we held tight to the family fortune of $150. 
     We had Marcelle's final paycheck as a nurse from a local 
     hospital as we headed back to an uncertain future. But in the 
     intervening years I have been fortunate to serve in ways that 
     I really enjoyed: as a lawyer, as a prosecutor, as a United 
     States Senator. And the people of Vermont have been very kind 
     to me. They overlooked the fact that I am a Democrat and the 
     only one they have ever elected. They don't expect me to 
     agree with them all the time, but they expect me to show 
     character and strong and thoughtful representation and 
     integrity, which are the things you have learned if you have 
     really understood what was taught here.
       These qualities are the greatest assets of a lawyer: to use 
     good judgment and integrity in representing a client. 
     Judgment and integrity are all that separates good lawyers 
     from a mere wordsmith and don't ever forget that because 
     Georgetown has given you the tools of your trade. Learn 
     how to use them. Of course you will read cases, of course 
     you will study the law, of course you will use honest 
     effort, but judgment rests on far more. Good lawyers 
     remain students all their lives because they refine their 
     skills through experience, both inside and outside of the 
     courtroom and law office. Remember what Walter Scott said, 
     ``a lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a 
     mere working mason. If he posseses some knowledge of these 
     he may venture to call himself an architect.'' So enjoy 
     the experience of living and teaching others to live. 
     Place a priority on the spiritual life you give your 
     family and then protect that closeness and that privacy 
     with as much zeal as you bring to the courtroom or the 
     negotiating table. The law is going to consume your 
     professional life, but don't let it overwhelm it. Take 
     time for music and literature, tend your gardens however 
     they might be, share with friends and take pleasure in 
     your family, just as your parents or spouses or sons or 
     daughters and family take great pride in you. Take time to 
     take pride in others after this day. You can be a good 
     lawyer and still be a good person. It's possible. It is!
       Take advantage of the opportunities your education has 
     given you. Take advantage of being happy. You are entering an 
     honorable profession, believe it or not. It's too easily 
     belittled, it's too often reviled for its apparent fixation 
     on money, whether in people or principle. Look at Judge 
     McDonald, look what she has done in serving not only as a 
     federal judge but as a professor and now stepping into the 
     maelstrom of what will be some of the most difficult 
     questions after the tragedy of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
       You know the image of the miserable lawyer is shared by too 
     many who are miserable in what they do in their work. They're 
     trying to figure out how they bill 30 hours a day as some do, 
     how to collect fees, how to generate new cases, and they fail 
     to find a way to work on matters they care about. I was 
     fortunate. I found serving in government important and 
     satisfying. I loved being a trial attorney. I thoroughly 
     enjoyed being a prosecutor--incidentally the best job one 
     might have--and then went to the second best job in the 
     United States Senate. And there I have had an interest in 
     health care and the health of children. I have been active on 
     our federal nutrition programs and have written most of them 
     as they now exist, to expand the WIC program for poor 
     pregnant women and their infants and children. We are the 
     wealthiest, most powerful nation on eath. Nobody in this 
     audience goes hungry except by choice. But let me tell you, 
     you can walk five minutes from here and see people who don't 
     have that choice. Work as lawyers and Americans to get rid of 
     hunger in this country.
       I go to work with scores of professionals, Republicans and 
     Democrats, on Capitol Hill every day. There are young lawyers 
     and older lawyers who work hard to make this nation a better 
     place. So when you leave law school, remember, don't buy into 
     an endless rat race that is made all the more depressing by 
     its apparent meaninglessness. There are other options. 
     Find a way to be happy in your professional life or you 
     have failed the magnificent opportunity you have been 
     given. Think about why you came here.
       In January of last year another Georgetown graduate took 
     the Presidential oath of office and called upon your 
     generation to serve in the renewal of America in its defining 
     moment and the life of this nation. Now, change is upon us. 
     When I vote on Judge Stephen Breyer's nomination I will--in a 
     short 20 years--have voted on all nine members of the Supreme 
     Court. Think of that change. Think of the change coming for 
     you. Most of you are going to live most of your lives in the 
     next century and that is where our needs are, to balance 
     health care system with privacy requirements, to find out how 
     you can maintain your own privacy, to weigh law enforcement 
     desires for wiretap authority in the age of digital switching 
     with Fourth Amendment rights, consider how intellectual 
     property rights and privacy and security concerns are going 
     to be accommodated along an information superhighway.
       All these things will involve you as lawyers. But think 
     what it means to you always as an individual if we can put 
     all the information about you in your whole life on a credit 
     card, to be read by a computer. Think about whether you want 
     to give up that privacy. Think of whether your interest is 
     the environment or equal justice or promoting access to those 
     isolated in urban and rural communities and respond to the 
     challenge of what the President has called a ``season of 
     service'' to act on your idealism.
       The practice of law is not about clever arguments or 
     stirring up lawsuits, but about good men and women resolving 
     disputes, by creating opportunities affecting other people's 
     lives for the better. That is what you can do: seek to 
     maintain faith with our history as we journey to the future.
       Think of what you have been handed, think of what your 
     responsibilities are. But don't forget you are a person 
     before you are a lawyer. And you have to be true to yourself 
     in that regard. Don't ever forget it. Don't let the rat race 
     get away with you. Keep the promise that you made to yourself 
     when you came here.
       And let me give a word of thanks. Thirty years ago I had to 
     miss my graduation at Georgetown. Today you gave me the 
     graduation I thought I'd never have and I will always be 
     grateful.

                          ____________________