USC Law Commencement Address

by Justice Candace Cooper
Sunday, May 15, 2005

Good morning Dean Spitzer, distinguished members of USC Law faculty, honored guests, friends, loving families and, most of all, the graduates of USC Law. I am deeply honored by your invitation to deliver the commencement remarks today and extend heartiest congratulations to all of you who are graduating — both J.D. and LL.M.  I know that you worked hard and long to be in this position, and you are entitled to every little bit of enjoyment that this day will bring. You have just made a splendid achievement. 

A brief description of the graduating J.D. class: You are 202 strong; 108 men and 94 women. Ethnically — in a rare accomplishment for a law school or any academic institution in this day and age — you are 45 percent minority and 55 percent white/Caucasian. You or your ancestors have come from nearly every corner of the world. This is a far cry from my law school days here, when there were two black men and two black women in each section, and a similar number of Hispanic and Asian students. I would have loved to be a part of a law school class as diverse as this one. Although I have no problem, no difficulty and no hesitation to speak authoritatively on behalf of all African-Americans, it was a little tiring to know that there were going to be certain days at school where you were going to get called on whether you wanted to or not. The only good thing was that you had a clue in advance for the days you had to be certain to be prepared. 

USC Law's LL.M. Program for Foreign Lawyers is proud to graduate its third class of Master of Laws students today. These students come from 14 different countries. Our 40 LL.M. students here today have been educated at top universities around the world. These foreign law graduates are associates at leading law firms, employed as corporate legal counsels and as business professionals in top companies worldwide, and work for the ministries of their home countries. They have brought their cultural insights and practical knowledge to USC Law, and we wish them well as they depart USC Law with their Master of Laws degree. I also have to warn them that they are now joining the strongest and most unique group of individuals in the world: USC alumni.

All of you have had the benefit of attending a remarkable institution of learning. Over the years USC Law has reached well-deserved national prominence. It has world-class faculty, innovative curriculum and some of the country’s finest minds in its student body. I admire your teachers because it takes great dedication to spend a lifetime teaching students and helping to prepare them to move on and become quality human beings and valuable members of the community. I am certain that your teachers here take great pride in your accomplishments and probably hold as much hope for your future as your family does.

Beyond these preliminary remarks, this is the most difficult speech I’ve ever prepared. It is difficult because there is just so much to cover, so much to talk about, so much for you to look forward to. With all that is going on, my biggest problem was trying to narrow the field to tell you graduates something useful, hopefully memorable and worthy of the occasion. 

I first considered doing the “welcome to the profession” speech and giving you advice about how to go about your career. There I have a few thoughts I could share. 

First, the recipe for success is simple. The key to success is no different on the outside than here in school; you have to work hard and be prepared. Your success will be commensurate with your efforts and, given a little luck thrown in with good timing, you will be more successful than you could imagine today. Hard work, persistence and initiative are still the certain path to success for most of us. 

If you also want complete professional satisfaction, I advise you to find a job where you love what you do. This will make the working long and hard much, much easier. You may survive and even prosper in a job that you do not enjoy, but you will take an emotional hit and probably suffer for it.

Check your character. Your professional reputation will be based more on your honesty and ethics than your financial success per se.  Ethical behavior will make your hard work worthy of admiration and you worthy of respect.

The key to staying centered, to remaining mentally healthy and emotionally balanced through all of this, is to remain connected to people that you love. Stay in touch with your law school friends; they will be your best friends for life. Give time and attention to your own family: parents, spouses, partners, siblings and children. Your professional success will be all the more sweet if you have someone to share it with. Also know that by the time you reach my age, which comes remarkable quickly, on more than one occasion you probably will have been willing to give back many of your material acquisitions to get just a few more minutes, hours or days with a loved one.

Roscoe Pound said law is a profession characterized by a "spirit of public service" — a spirit that requires a devotion of time, effort and talent to help the community. The community is in serious need of your service. No matter which direction you take with your legal career, be it private practice, practice in a large firm, government law, public interest law or a career outside the law in business, always remember this obligation. Assisting the community is one of the obligations that come along with the license.   

Several years ago the American Bar Association reported that 70 to 80 percent of low-income citizens who needed a lawyer in a civil case could not find one. Assuring access to justice is one of the more formidable challenges facing the legal profession, and you should actively participate in the effort to resolve this problem. 

I also considered giving you the speech about our amazing Constitution and the freedoms that the Constitution protects: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to privacy, freedom of association, right to vote and to have your vote count. This would also give me the opportunity to talk about the need for judicial independence, for maintaining the separation of church and state.

The Constitution provides for the rule of law, protects basic liberty, guarantees certain forms of equality, prevents too much power from falling into the hands of too few individuals and, above all, creates a framework for democratic government. The Constitution is a remarkable document. As such, it sets forth the fundamental values under which our democracy was formed and remains to this day the overarching statement of those values. We live in compliance with these values, not simply because they are written down on a piece of paper, but because over our history we have seen that living in accord with the Constitution has given our country strength in difficult times and given us the opportunity to bring our daily existence in line with the values of the Constitution, as well as the motivation to strive for that end. 

Largely because of the Constitution, we live in the greatest and most successful multicultural and multiracial experiment in the world. What the founders of this nation imagined? I think most certainly not. But through the Constitution — more specifically the values that it embodies — we have not only survived, but prospered.

Barbara Jordan, an African-American woman who was a member of the Texas Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives and one of my true heroes, once said, "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”

I wanted to alert you that I think we are now seeing serious challenges to some of these principles and values. Some threats come from well-intentioned people that do not understand the Constitution and the delicate balance that it reflects. Some challenges come from people who think we have to give up certain constitutional protections because of new threats to our security. However, we will not do better or be safer if we abandon our fundamental principles. The real test of the Constitution’s strength is not how well it functions in time of peace and prosperity, but in how well it functions in times of crisis or stress.  We have great reason to be proud of our constitutional heritage and should continue to preserve the rule of law. Make preservation of our constitutional freedoms part of the service that you perform for the community. Don’t be an idle spectator in this battle.

I could have given you a speech about the past accomplishments of my generation and future ambitions for yours.

My grandmother was born in the 1880s and passed away in the 1960s. She was born in and lived in the country with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, no paved roads, no TV and no radio. When I was small I used to think about the changes in the world that occurred during her lifetime and what she must have thought about them: from the Model A Ford automobile to men walking on the moon; from dirt roads to a national highway system; from handwritten letters to communication by telephone. I thought it must have seemed amazing to her and I didn’t imagine that in the next half-century so much could change again. 

By its end, the 20th century was the most innovative era of accomplishment in history. I think of what has happened in my lifetime. The changes witnessed by my grandmother, while amazing no doubt, are miniscule compared to the vast changes brought about through the second half of the last century. These are the changes that I personally have witnessed. When I started USC undergraduate school in 1966 — yes, I really am that old — I came to school with a slide rule and a brand new Corona portable electric typewriter. The typewriter was state-of-the-art at the time, and the slide rule was all that existed, besides an abacus, to help with mathematical calculations. I recall with great vividness when the first kids showed up at USC with handheld calculators. I also recall my resentment when I learned they cost $350 each. Tuition at USC was $750 a semester at that time, and my family had to scratch to get that together.

In my time we’ve gone from plane travel to space travel, from TV to MP3. You can sit in this audience and talk on a phone to someone all the way around the world. We know how to transplant hearts, replace hips, clone sheep and squeeze a library's worth of data into a single silver disk. By virtue of the advancements in communication technology, in my lifetime I personally witnessed the first walk on the moon, watched the coverage after the assassination of JFK, and watched the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald live on TV with 20 other girls at my 15th birthday sleepover. I also watched as our two ill-fated shuttle flights blew up, and I watched when the towers fell on Sept. 11.

My rather unremarkable imagination cannot begin to comprehend what changes you will see during your lifetime. The past century was a time of momentous, mind-boggling, world-altering change, and it was merely an overture for your generation. I envy your opportunity to explore the next level of changes.

I could also give a commencement speech to you about the role of lawyers in society. By virtue of your natural brightness and understanding of the democratic processes you will become the natural leaders of your generation. As such you should prepare to fully engage the extensive scope of your skills and abilities as a participant in the democratic process. There is much at stake and you, as educated and talented individuals, will be in a position in the future to impact the world. Needless to say, we live in difficult and complicated times. Now more than ever we need the keenest minds to assess the problems and help find and effect solutions; the time for trial and error has come to an end. There are monumental challenges that you will face and critical issues that my generation was unable to resolve. Many serious problems remain, some of which I predict will come to a crisis in your lifetime. Some are of ancient origin; some may seem intractable.  But as lawyers and leaders in the future you will be in a position to impact the policy and help direct the future of this country. 

In your lifetime, I think the following issues will reach crisis level and will have to be addressed. They will not be possible to ignore or avoid. 

Environment: I think we all see now that the earth really is fragile. The visible damage to the environment in my lifetime has been horrifying and can’t continue. Your generation will have to resolve this issue. I don’t believe the world can take another 50 to 100 years of toxic pollution, waste and environmental damage without dramatic changes in everyone’s life. 

Energy: Absent some remarkable inventions (while I certainly hope will occur), I predict that the world struggle for resources will only increase. When gas hits $25 a gallon, everybody’s lifestyle will be impacted. We will live more like my grandmother, walking to places and not taking unnecessary trips. Not at all like my childhood, when my dad would pile all four kids and my mom into the station wagon for his famous “Sunday Drives.” In his own version of “See the USA in your Chevrolet,” he would tank up and drive as far as he could in one direction and still be able to drive back home in the same day.

HIV/AIDS: Domestically we have our own issues with AIDS, and in spite of increasingly effective treatment, it continues to impact our country. Approximately 1.5 million people in the U.S. have been infected with HIV, including more than 500,000 who already have died. 

A United Nations study concludes that AIDS appears to be an increasingly global epidemic, currently spreading rapidly in Eastern Europe and Asia. Roughly 5 million people became infected with HIV in 2003, more than in any previous year. Of the 33.4 million people worldwide that have AIDS, 23 million are in Africa. In some countries AIDS already has reduced the average life expectancy by about 30 years. In Botswana, about 25 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV. Nearly 72 percent of the world's HIV infections are in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with just 10 percent of the world's population. Their health crisis will undoubtedly impact us — in ways yet unknown.

The number of AIDS orphans is unbelievable. I saw a TV bit where a large metropolitan city was abandoned except for small children who were attempting to take care of themselves and the other children, with limited childlike successes. The public service announcement conveyed that the magnitude of Africa’s orphan population would be equivalent to every child under the age of 5 being orphaned in the United States. I never saw that ad again; I suspect it was pulled for being both too disturbing, too effective.

Particularly, as one of the countries that holds the keys to treatment, we can’t ignore the worldwide AIDS epidemic. You could say that the problems in Africa are not our responsibility. That may be true, but at this scale failing to try and resolve the crisis is really a type of ethnic cleansing, and we cannot ignore such a vast disaster.

We have also seen the advent of new diseases such as SARS and the returning of diseases that had been eliminated or controlled, such as polio, tuberculosis and small pox. These health challenges will have to be dealt with as well.

Racial Justice: This may not come to crisis, but I just wanted to comment that at home, we have never truly come to grips with the issues of race and racism. We need an honest and open dialogue on issues of race. We also cannot call the effort off before it is resolved. To become “colorblind” or proclaim “colorblindness” in a country where last week sheriffs fired 122 rounds at an unarmed African-American man in a car; where unarmed Amadou Diallo was killed after being shot at 41 times and hit 19; where our own city neighborhoods and schools are more racially segregated than at any time in the past; in a country where the most salient statistic about the imposition of the death penalty is the race of the victim — is both naive and dangerously shortsighted.

Perhaps your generation, those that have finally had an opportunity to live and work together, can finally come together for what will not be a simple or easy discussion, but one that must come to pass. These are just a few of many social justice issues that still need resolution. The same can be said for the many other forms of discrimination of sexual orientation and gender. All remain unresolved.

Poverty: Most people in most places, including 30 million of us, live in the terrible reality of poverty. Poverty guidelines in the U.S. are $13,000 a year. In other places, people live on pennies a day. Martha Stewart went to court with a Hermes handbag costing $15,000. If you look on eBay you can find these bags at prices up to $30,000. I don’t begrudge Martha and her handbag, and it isn’t that Martha didn’t work very hard to develop her businesses and earn the income to purchase that bag. I made this observation to point out that in the next century I suspect that this country will have to acknowledge and hopefully reject the current level of materialism and excessive consumption. 

In the 1940s and 1950s it was a car in every garage, a chicken in every pot. Now there is not just a car and a color TV, but a car, cell phone and PDA for every member of the family, a TV for every room. Don’t get me wrong, I also want my 62-inch plasma TV, but I also recognize that this over consumption is directly related to the resolution of other social problems. Would you give up a TV to stop the spread of AIDS? Would you forgo a luxury vacation to help bring a struggling country up to where it could produce enough to feed its own people? People ask why the United States is so disliked around the world. I think this may have a lot to do with it.

When I finished thinking about what type of commencement speech to give, I decided that I had to try and do it all. The events in the world are so troublesome that I could not simply stand here, give the normal address, and talk only about your time at USC and your future career. Although I couldn’t detail all of my concerns, we know that the future, with all its problems and promises, is out there for the taking, and I know that you are prepared and ready to take it on. I hope I have illustrated that now, more than ever, we need your youth and energy, your drive, passion, and commitment to justice and liberty.

Thomas Jefferson said, "There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.” Nature and fortune have given you much. Much you have earned and will continue to learn more through your hard work. And much is expected from you. I am confident that you will pay your debt in full.

Thank you very much, and the very best of luck to each and every one of you. May you prosper and may you live, some day, in a world of justice for all.