New Judge Swearing In
Brief Talking Points
Recognize dignitaries
I come here today to speak on behalf of the 16,000 attorneys who are members of the Minnesota State
Bar Association.
Those 16,000 attorneys, organized into 37 Sections, 9 Committees, 21 District Bar Associations and
numerous Affiliated Specialty and Minority Bars join with me in welcoming, and thanking, Judge NAME
for accepting a position on the NAME OF COURT.
Among the goals and purposes of these 16,000 attorneys are to:
 Aid the courts in the administration of justice; and
 Apply the knowledge and experience of the profession to the public good; and
 Maintain in the profession high standards of learning, competence, ethics, and public service.
Judge NAME has demonstrated his/her devotion to the legal profession and to the betterment of
society.
How, then, do you explain his/her willingness to take on yet another public service position?
I think the answer can be found in the need of some few of us to lead a meaningful professional life.
Judge NAME is one of those few of us willing to lead such a life.
Most of us seek to lead a peaceful, or comfortable, or rewarding professional life-- few of us are willing
to make the sacrifices that are needed to lead a meaningful professional life.
Few lead meaningful professional lives because it is hard to do so.
Let me explain why.
More than forty years ago, Kent Keith wrote the following maxims, which he dubbed the --The
Paradoxical Commandments.
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest
men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001
To my mind these maxims are cautionary notes for those who would lead a meaningful professional life.
The cardinal maxim that underlies both law and morality is, Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you and the person who seeks equity must do equity.
For all its talk about absolute truth and divine wisdom, the salvation, redemption and enlightenment of
the individual is the goal of virtually every ethical system.
For all its pretension to economic efficiency, social engineering, and neutral principles, it is justice in the
individual case to which our legal system aspires.
What ought to matter to us, as judges and lawyers, are the same thing that has always mattered to us as
moral actors: the lives that we touch, the pain that we soothe, and the faces that we make smile.
The law is more than a business or a profession, it is a vocation, and we who have been called to that
vocation must never forget that it is people that matter.
This Judge NAME has spent a career remembering.
More than a quarter millennium ago, Benjamin Franklin wrote that the noblest question in the world is
What Good may I do in it?
That is a question Judge NAME has spent a career asking, one day at a time.
Finally, one of my favorite quotations is of John F. Kennedy whose words I will paraphrase only slightly
to make them fit for this occasion. President Kennedy once said that:
“The credit belongs to the [man|woman] who is actually in the arena, . . . who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends [himself|herself] in a worthy cause; who at best,
if [he|she] wins, knows the thrills of high achievement, and, if [she] fails, at least fails daring
greatly, so that [his|her] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither
victory nor defeat.”
John F Kennedy, 35th US President; 1961 comment quoted by William Manchester in
frontispiece for The Last Lion -- Little, Brown 83.
And so, Judge NAME, on behalf of the 16,000 members of the Minnesota State Bar Association, I wish to
extend not only my congratulations, but also my thanks for your willingness to make the sacrifices
necessary to lead a meaningful professional life.
We appreciate it.