Michael S. Greco
Commencement Address
Temple University/Tsinghua University
Rule of Law LL.M. Program
Tsinghua University Campus
Beijing, China
November 2, 2013
Thank you, Dean Epps, for that very warm introduction.
It is a great pleasure to be with you -- the members of the Class of 2013 and your families
and friends -- on this happy occasion, your graduation from the excellent Temple/Tsinghua
LL.M. Rule of Law program.
Today you join a distinguished alumni group of judges, leaders of the legal profession
and leaders of government who understand the great importance to society of a system based on
a just Rule of Law.
Congratulations!
Today you embark on the next phase of your exciting journey as a lawyer. You have
chosen a demanding but highly rewarding profession. You will have the opportunity to do well
for yourselves and your loved ones.
You also will have the opportunity -- indeed, the moral responsibility -- to honor
traditions and principles that are at the heart of the legal profession: public service and
leadership. By using your training and your skills, you will be able to protect a just Rule of Law.
You will be able to help protect the rights of people, particularly those who are most vulnerable
who need legal help. In doing so, you will help to ensure access to justice for all people.
The opportunity to serve one’s fellow citizens, to help solve problems in society, to
protect the rule of law, continues to draw young women and men to the law. It is what attracted
me to study the law fifty years ago. It is what led me to become a trial lawyer, so that I might
protect people’s rights in the courts. It is what motivated me to serve as President of the
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American Bar Association and its more than 400,000 members, in order to help provide legal
services to persons whose basic human rights and needs are at risk but who have no money to
pay a lawyer. And it is what motivates me now to teach a course on international criminal
justice in China at Peking University School of Transnational Law.
I do not need to talk with you about the critical importance of the Rule of Law in today’s
world. Your excellent professors have done that, and I am confident that you have listened
carefully. Nor do I need to remind everyone here what a dangerous time this is for the rule of
law throughout the world.
What I do want to talk about is you -- about what you might choose to do with your
legal education to make this a better world.
I ask you to consider with me the meaning of two words: “injustice” and “courage.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., in his1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” said this about
injustice:
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are all tied in a single garment
of destiny -- whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
Those words of Martin Luther King, Jr., but more importantly the values and principles
that he stood for, have influenced me greatly. His example helped to shape my own values as I
was growing up in the mid-west of the US, after emigrating from Italy in 1950 at the age of
seven, the son of an American mother and Italian father.
In 2005 I was elected president of the American Bar Association. By then I had been a
trial lawyer for thirty years, representing clients in large business and commercial disputes, some
of which attracted national attention. I had worked hard to become the most skilled lawyer I
could be, for clients that included Fortune 500 corporations, and high profile business leaders, in
complicated and expensive commercial disputes.
But equally important to me have been clients and causes I have represented that do not
involve powerful corporations or multi-million dollar business disputes. They have been cases
involving ordinary people, good people, vulnerable people, who need a lawyer to protect their
rights from those who try to violate or deny those rights. And some times the violator is the
government. These clients and cases have given meaning to my career as a lawyer, and they
have given me great personal satisfaction.
Let me tell you about my first such case.
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As a young lawyer in 1974 -- two years after graduating from law school -- I began to
work on a lawsuit that my Boston law firm had filed in court against the government of the State
of Massachusetts. Our clients were many hundreds of young people with severe physical and
mental disabilities who lived in state institutions. The institutions were filthy, unhealthy, and
heart-breaking. Boys and girls, who had committed no crimes, were living in conditions worse
than prison, and they had no one to take care of them, or even cleanse them.
My law firm assigned highly skilled partners and associates to do battle with the
government of the State of Massachusetts. The lawsuit was fought for more than five years
before it was resolved. The result was a settlement in which the government agreed to spend
many millions of dollars to correct all the health and other problems that we had documented at
institutions throughout Massachusetts.
The work that we lawyers did in that case on a pro bono basis -- that is, without charging
a fee for legal work amounting to millions of dollars of lawyer time -- was deeply satisfying to
us. We were happy that we had used our legal skills to help end human suffering and injustices.
We felt we had made a substantial contribution to fellow citizens in our community.
When the case ended, the tears and smiles on the faces of the young people we had
helped to live a better life, and on the faces of their parents and brothers and sisters, was
compensation to us that was more valuable than money.
The case I have just told you about is one example of what “injustice” can mean. The
case is also an example of the difference that a lawyer can make in standing up to injustice, in
helping people in great need people protect their rights, and thereby upholding the rule of law.
What about the word “courage?”
As a high school student in 1959 I read a book entitled, “Profiles in Courage.” It was
written by a young US Senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy, who would become
president of the United States in 1960. The book contains profiles, or stories, of eight men, all
former US Senators, who in their careers showed bravery in standing up to powerful private
interests and governments.
Those men were highly criticized by powerful interest groups, and in public opinion and
the press, when they chose to do what was best for their country and for all people, and not just
the powerful. These men could have chosen to avoid controversy by being quiet, by turning their
heads and closing their eyes, by doing nothing.
Instead, those men demonstrated courage in doing what was right, even when it meant
possibly jeopardizing their careers. The stories in the book “Profiles in Courage,” have helped to
remind me why I became a lawyer, and what courage means.
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I believe that in this room there are other profiles in courage that one day will be written.
I conclude my remarks with this.
In 1962, Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States, delivered a
speech at the University of San Francisco Law School in which he talked about courage. He
said this:
Courage is the most important attribute of a lawyer, more important than competence or
vision. It can never be outdated or outworn. It should pervade the heart, the halls of
justice and the chambers of the mind.
Injustice and courage. Two words.
Injustice is inevitable. It is a certainty.
Courage is not a certainty. It is a matter of personal choice. It is a matter of principle. It is
a matter of conscience.
Injustices will confront you during your career. It will take courage to stand up to those
injustices, to do what is right.
Thank you for your kind attention. You have my very best wishes for a successful and
meaningful career in the law.
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