On this Baccalaureate Sunday, will you join me in extending to our guest, a warm Boston
University Marsh Chapel greeting.
[Applause]
Thank you, and Dean Hill, for the warmth of that greeting. As he said, I feel like I'm
among family this morning.
It is clear Boston University has thrived under President Brown's leadership. Among
his other attributes, I can tell you he's a hard man to say "no" to. After I had accepted,
with pleasure, his invitation to receive an honorary degree, only then did he tell
me that he would like me to give this Baccalaureate address.
So I feel a bit like those medieval minstrels, or even little Tommy Tucker from the nursery
rhyme, who had to sing first before having supper. But my, what a glorious supper, what
a glorious feast this is, filled with joy, and pride, and hope, and expectations.
This morning's service envelops you in the spiritual realm. Later today you honor people
of distinction from technology, and commerce, the arts, the sciences, and military service.
I want to speak of a different realm - the civil realm: the realm of citizenship, of
love of country, and of your government.
One of the greatest fortunes of your lives is that you are participants in our American
democracy, with its independent judiciary and its system of justice. Our democracy is
built on both the checks and balances structure of the three branches of government and on
the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, which limit government. The executive and legislative
branches are meant to reflect the political will of the voters. In the judicial branch,
unlike the other two branches, we judges take an oath of impartiality, not to be partisan.
The oath we take says we will do our jobs "without fear or favor."
This system is the envy of the entire world. Your counterparts elsewhere, in Syria, in
the Arab Spring, in Russia, in Syria, in Iran, in China, in Chile, to give a few examples,
have put their lives at risk to achieve what you have.
Dr. Martin Luther King said: "There is nothing in the world greater than freedom." In this
country, we have one secular document, which is a "sacred" text. It is the United States
Constitution. Under that you enjoy considerable freedoms, including the freedom of academic
inquiry here at Boston University. You have the freedom to worship your own religion and
not be forced to attend to another. You enjoy the freedom from arbitrary police and government
action.
But most significantly, you have the ability to change your government and to change your
country. You enjoy freedom of speech, of association, and the benefits of a free press. You have
the ability to vote, the ability to communicate your views, and to challenge and change a
government you do not like. You have the ability to make laws and to change the laws, and to
do so in order to face the problems your generation sees.
Now all of these freedoms are important human values in their own right and worth preserving.
But as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has said, our Constitutional values are not embedded
in the human gene code. Indeed, far from it: they must be taught, and valued, and used,
lest they be lost.
Our system of government has worked remarkably well for over two centuries. It has gotten
our country through profound problems and changed who we are, and done so for the better.
My own life experiences tell me this is true, and it will be true for you.
When I came to BU, the country was rocked by unrest. The problems were so difficult,
my generation wondered if we would survive. It was the era of the possibility of nuclear
annihilation, of the civil rights movement, of the women's movement, and the anti-war
movement. Blatant race and gender discrimination were prevalent. Extreme inequities in access
to opportunity had led to demonstrations, riots, the burning of neighborhoods, and clashes
with police. There was the killing of students at Kent State, and this campus was torn by
dissent and student strikes. During this time and in the streets of the civilized city of
Boston, I was tear gassed while marching to protest the war in Vietnam, and memorably
I was called foul names by ugly crowds when I marched with people of color in favor of
civil rights.
Indeed, I wondered if I would graduate from law school. I ran out of money, and it looked
like I would never be a lawyer. But the student loan program had just been enacted by Congress,
and that allowed me to stand where I am.
My fears about the future were captured in the words of William Butler Yeats, in his
poem "The Second Coming." He wrote: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy
is loosed upon the world."
The problems we faced were daunting, but under our democracy, we got through them.
The hymn we just sang at this service was "Behold a broken world." You know better than
I the problems of this broken world, and that you and your country must somehow address
them.
There is much corrosive cynicism today, much polarization, much lack of civility. Some
say they have no faith in government to address problems. It would be reasonable for you to
ask whether the fact that our democracy has served us so well for so long is any assurance
at all that it will lead you to solve the problems that we face.
My response is that our democratic form of government and the tools the Constitution
gives you provide some of the best ways you have of addressing those problems. And I also
answer that, if you do not use those tools, including your right to vote, to speak, to
organize, in order to assure that your government will be honest, responsive, and relevant,
the chances of you coming to solutions are considerably less.
You are graduating and being asked to take responsibility for yourself and your own life,
but the scope of that responsibility goes beyond yourself to the sort of society in
which you live. For my generation, President John F. Kennedy famously asked, "ask not what
your country could do for you, but what you could do for your country." Your country still
needs you. Perhaps more now than then.
That responsibility means the preserving of the institutions of your democracy, which
are the institutions of government.
It also means exercising those freedoms the Constitution has given you.
BU students often have done so before. Forty-five years ago, students on this campus used those
tools and changed our country. Defying a state law, a man named William Baird gave a lecture
at Boston University to over 2,500 students. His topic was birth control. An unmarried
19-year-old female student accepted from Baird some contraceptive foam. Under state law,
married people, but not unmarried people, could legally be given contraception. Baird
was arrested and convicted for violating the state law prohibiting distribution of contraceptives
to unmarried people. The penalty he faced was up to five years of imprisonment.
The whole event had been deliberately set up on the BU campus in order to bring a constitutional
challenge to that law. And the federal court on which I now sit held that the statute unconstitutional
and ordered Baird released on the great writ of habeas corpus. In 1972, the Supreme Court
agreed, in a case is called Eisenstadt v. Baird, named after the then-Sheriff and Mr.
Baird.
When the story is told, it is most often about Baird, who deserves great credit, but let
me shift the perspective. Of all the college campuses in Boston, this took place at BU
and that does not surprise me. BU has always looked to the future. More than that, credit
must be given to the BU students who went to the lecture, and particularly to the unmarried
19-year-old female undergraduate, who made the test case possible. Those students wanted
to change an unjust law and to expand the protection of individual freedoms. This was
no small matter and it was not merely about contraceptives. The overturning of the state
law led to the development of doctrines of constitutionally protected personal privacy,
which have reshaped our society.
These changes take time. They take great patience, and perseverance. But as Dr. King said, "The
arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
You have the keys to affect your future and to take steps to be sure "the center holds."
Take responsibility. Go forward with your intelligence, your education, and with courage.
Use these tools and freedoms that our American democracy and its system of laws have give
you.
I stand before you a federal judge. I'm of the baby boomer generation. We are handing
power over to you, the next generations. We give into your hands the safekeeping of our
Constitution and our democracy. Please, we ask you, keep them safe and flourishing.
Thank you.