Graduation 2020

Walter Dellinger, the Douglas B. Maggs Professor Emeritus of Law, told Duke Law School’s 2020 graduates that they “are challenged to be a part of a special time” when he addressed them during a virtual celebration on May 9. “You have an unparalleled opportunity to help lead us out from a dark period and to think about what fundamental changes need to be made to our way of living, our way of being, and our way of governance,” said Dellinger, a renowned Supreme Court advocate, former assistant U.S. attorney general and head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and former acting U.S. solicitor general. A member of the Duke Law faculty for more than 50 years, he also assured them that no correlation exists between law school grades and professional and personal fulfillment and that each of them can commit to being an ethical lawyer and a good person.

“The great qualities of being a lawyer are, by and large, qualities that you can conscientiously adopt,” he said. “That is, having good moral values, being conscientious and having the capacity for hard work, having a willingness to support and assist the work of others who are your peers, a respect for the dignity of every single person who works in your institution no matter what their role may be in the organization, a quality of empathy for those who are unlike yourself.”

Kerry Abrams, the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean of the School of Law and professor of law, hosted the celebration of the Class of 2020, which was held online after the pandemic forced a postponement of their planned convocation ceremony in Cameron Indoor Stadium and included a “name crawl” of all the graduates. She noted that the graduates, their family members, professors, and supporters had logged on from all over the nation and the world.

Among the 206 JD graduates honored, 24 had also completed requirements for the LLM in international and comparative law and seven were also receiving the LLM in law and entrepreneurship. Ninety internationally trained lawyers had completed the requirements for the LLM and two attorneys were receiving the LLM in law and entrepreneurship. Twenty sitting state, federal, and international judges had completed the coursework and thesis required to receive the LLM in judicial studies.

Offering her congratulations to the graduates, Abrams also emphasized her confidence in their ability “to be the leaders that the world needs right now, in your profession and in your communities.”

The pandemic represented an unprecedented crisis that had shaken the global economy and affected many of them personally, creating extraordinary challenges to launching or resuming their careers, she acknowledged. “But I have seen firsthand the resilience of the Class of 2020. You have already overcome so much here today, I know that you are prepared to handle anything that comes at you.”

Dellinger, who received the American Constitution Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award in June, offered the example of Abraham Lincoln, “America’s greatest lawyer,” to demonstrate how legal skills can be applied to a wide range of societal problems — and to challenge the graduates to follow suit.

In 1858, 50-year-old Lincoln was, he said, “a financially insecure, failing politician with no administrative experience.” But Lincoln was galvanized by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford that no person of color, slave or free, could ever be a citizen of the United States and that Congress had no power to limit slavery in the territories. That June, at the Illinois Republican convention in Springfield, he delivered a speech — the “House Divided” speech — that “led him into the debates of his public life,” said Dellinger, a partner at O’Melveny in Washington, D.C.

“It was poetical, full of biblical references, metaphorical, and yet it was a legal analysis. He became the first person ever to become a national figure on the basis of an analysis of a Supreme Court decision.”

Lincoln used the Dred Scott decision “to say that we could no longer survive half slave and half free,” Dellinger said.

“‘That we shall lie down, pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri were on the verge of making their state free and awake to the reality instead that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state.’ And he committed himself to meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty as ‘the work now, before all of us that would prevent its consummation.’”

The techniques Lincoln used to achieve his objective were the same ones he used in his private law practice representing banks, debtors, creditors, plaintiffs, and defendants, never compromising his principles, always trying to reach pragmatic objectives, and always narrowing the issue “to what he needed to win the immediate battle before him,” Dellinger said.

Lincoln “tried to read the Constitution for the best for which it could be read and to find a way to deal with the great issues” and reimagined the founding document as being the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution, he said.

“When he’s charged with being for racial equality, he says he’s only for equality of those rights that are included in the Declaration of Independence. That’s a narrow group — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What’s not within life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? So he understands where he wants to go and is able to do it.”

To counter the fact that the Supreme Court — and, thus, the Constitution — are backing slavery, Lincoln argued that “‘if the Constitution is imperfect, it is imperfect as judged by the Declaration of Independence,’” Dellinger said.

Positing Lincoln as a figure uniquely capable of moral growth and deeply affected by presiding over the Civil War as well as by the death of his beloved son, Dellinger said the president was a very different person by 1864. He called the final section of Lincoln’s second inaugural address the most powerful words uttered by any American president and the work of a great lawyer.

“He says that ‘It’s a curse on all of America that this dreadful war with 750,000 dead must be God’s will that we have earned this retribution, we North and South.’ And he says, ‘If God wills that this war continued until all of the wealth piled up by the bonds of the slaves, 250 years of unrequired toil, when all of that is done, when all of that is sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with a lash shall be paid with another drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are truly pensions forever. We may have deserved this, all of this extraordinary moment.’”

Having described Lincoln as unfulfilled at 50, Dellinger noted that he was dead at age 56. “In between, he changed the world,” Dellinger told the graduates. “Go forth and make Duke proud of you.”

LLM class speaker Karim M’ziani, who holds an LLB from ParisSud University and an LLM in European and international business law from Paris Dauphine University, said that his classmates had become a family, proving “that love has no border and no nationality.” M’ziani, a dual citizen of France and Comoros who at Duke organized and moderated a conference on Chinese investment in Africa and represented the Law School at the Vis Moot Court Competition, praised the strength and resilience his classmates had displayed in the face of the pandemic.

“My LLM brothers and sisters, this is your time to show the world your talent,” he said. “My LLM brothers and sisters, embrace your destiny. ... Today we need people like my mother helping in the fight against the pandemic in hospitals. Tomorrow we’ll need you to rebuild the world shaken by Covid-19.”

JD class speaker Donovan Stone congratulated his classmates for “crossing the finish line,” even though they did it remotely. Stone, a native of Shreveport, La., who won the 2020 Dean’s Cup Moot Court Competition and served on the Moot Court Board, as senior online editor of the Duke Law Journal, and as internal vice president of the Black Law Students Association, said the moment of celebration wouldn’t have been possible without the support of friends and family and the “unyielding support” of the Duke Law faculty and staff.

“You all have shown us just how special Duke Law is in your response to Covid-19 this semester,” said Stone, who is headed to federal clerkships at the district court and appellate levels.

While the graduates face tremendous uncertainty as the world adapts to a new post-pandemic reality, they share an opportunity to help construct a “new normal,” he added. “And it is my wish for all of us that we commit to shaping a new normal that is happier, friendlier, and healthier than the old normal.”

While such habits as studying too much or taking on too many responsibilities can be hard to break, the pandemic shutdown offered a model, he said.

“Since this all began, I’ve seen so many people pause, reflect, and reconnect with old friends and family. I’ve seen countless screen shots of Zoom happy hours, and Stone personally I’ve logged more hours of walking and saying hello to neighbors and strangers than I ever did before.

“These are the little moments, relationships, and habits that I hope help define our new normal.”

Lacking a guide to being a lawyer or surviving a global pandemic, he said that he and his classmates would have one another as they begin their lives after graduation from Duke: “Just as we navigated law school together, I’m confident that together the Class of 2020 will be able to navigate whatever life throws at us next.”