What happened on September 11, 2011, to the role of the lawyer in our democracy?

In this year’s graduation address, Law Professor George Fisher considered that question, and recalled how on that tragic day he sat with one eye on his television and the other on his computer screen, trying to prepare for an evidence lecture and wondering whether he could persuade his students that “evidence law remained somehow relevant” as “the world came undone.” 

The next day, as Fisher and his students struggled to push aside the shock and focus on their class, he felt a nagging fear that a fundamental change had occurred. “I worried that lawyers and law could never again claim their central role in guiding and shaping culture,” he said. 

Almost two years after that class, many of those same students were in the audience on May 18 in Memorial Auditorium, wearing black gowns and mortarboards and ready to enter the legal profession. Whoops and screams came from the crowd of 1,600, when graduates from the Class of 2003 crossed the stage one by one to shake Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan’s hand. Among those participating in the ceremony were 188 candidates for the degree of Doctor of jurisprudence (JD); 18 for the degree of LLM, with 9 focusing in the area of Corporate Governance & Practice and 9 in Law, Science & Technology; 14 for the degree of Master of the Science of Law (JSM); and 5 for the degree of Doctor of the Science of Law (JSD). 

For many, it was a moment to celebrate the end of three intense years-champagne, focaccia sandwiches, and strawberries and cre~lm were served in the courtyard beneath Hoover Tower. But the joy did not overshadow the seriousness of the occasion, or the questions about whether threats to the nation’s security have forever undermined the country’s commitment to the rule of law. 

Dean Sullivan, the Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, told the graduates that they were well prepared to demonstrate how vital lawyers are to society, especially in such troubled times. “We have tried to inspire you to welcome the challenges of law, to revel in its difficulty, to love its complexity and its nuance and depth,” she said, adding later, “You know, better than many law school graduates before you, how greatly the world needs lawyers – that group of people whose job is to anticipate, prevent, and manage conflict.” 

Class Co-President Sarah Nancy Lindemann also snuck a hopeful note in her commencement speech and cited East Timor and Sierra Leone as two examples of places where lawyers have recently made a difference, helping establish new institutions that seek to provide justice and order to the citizens of those nations. And she added that here in the United States, “Lawyers are bringing increased scrutiny to the application of the death penalty.” She exhorted her classmates to “go forth as lawyers, looking for our own ways of contributing to hope and progress.” 

Fisher joined Lindemann in urging the graduates to uphold and advocate for the rule of law, but he warned them that they would be practicing at a time when concerns about safety had led many to compromise civil liberties and due process. 

In the graduation’s keynote address, Fisher, whom students had selected to win the 2003 John Bingham Hurlbut Award for Excellence in Teaching for the second time, remarked that in the 20 months since the 9/11 tragedies, some of his worst fears have come true. “We have passed through an era in which law and lawyers have withdrawn to the sidelines, and our military and security institutions have taken center field,” he said. “This has been an era of war, and in times of war, as Cicero said, the laws fall silent.” 

Fisher’s pointing to the many ways that the law has been changed or evaded in the quest for security was not meant “to indict our leaders,” but rather “to lament our loss,” he explained. “We have learned that when our very survival is at stake, the legal terms of that survival may become negotiable.” 

Yet Fisher cautioned against too much pessimism. Even as the law’s influence waned in some areas, it waxed in others. He cited the successful challenges to racial profiling, discriminatory lending practices, executions of the mentally retarded, corporate fraud, and new security measures put in place since September 11 as evidence that the rule of law remains vibrant. He expressed, in particular, the hope that the Supreme Court would repudiate its 1986 ruling in Bowers v. Hanwick, which essentially allowed states to outlaw homosexual sex. (His hope came true a few weeks later when, on June 26, the Court reversed itself in Lawrence v. Texas.) 

“The rule of law cannot cure all the world’s evils,” Fisher said. “But it can cure some.” 

And he concluded: “When you leave here today, I hope you will go out there resolved to cure those evils that are within the law’s power to cure. We will be here, waiting while the world decides whether the rule of law retakes its place as the arbiter of social progress. You will be out there, working to regain the day in which law, and not fear-law, and not force-will shape our world.” 

A couple of hours before the graduation ceremony Associate Dean for Student Affairs Catherine Glaze ’85 (AB ’80) received a call on her cell phone from a frantic student. He had forgotten his gown and did not have time to go back to San Francisco to retrieve it. Glaze quickly found a replacement, defusing yet another crisis for a member of the Class of 2003. 

It’s this sort of troubleshooting-along with being a constant source of advice, solace, and humor-that earned Glaze the Staff Appreciation Award from the graduating students. “She’s the glue that holds the students and administration together,” Brian Gustafson, Class Co-President, said, when introducing Glaze at the ceremony. Glaze became Associate Dean a few weeks after the Class of 2003 first enrolled, and she “quickly won the trust of both students and faculty,” Gustafson concluded. 

Glaze then walked to the podium and remarked that the best way to show her appreciation for the honor was to quickly get to the two words that every parent in the audience wanted to hear: their child’s first and last names.