My Remarks on National Law Day: A Nationwide Stand for the Rule of Law

Delivered May 1 on the Plaza of the United States Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles to a Gathering of Like-minded Legal Professionals and Concerned Citizens

From National Law Day…

The principles of judicial independence and the legal profession—cornerstones of American democracy—are facing unprecedented challenges. Join attorneys, law students, and judges nationwide for a powerful demonstration to defend these essential foundations of our democracy.

Time is of the essence. When we stand together, we send a clear message that the rule of law must be protected.

Thank you Sarvenaz. It’s an honor to be here, speaking alongside you as the leader of the LA County Bar Association and two judges I greatly admire: The Honorable Dolly Gee, Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California and the Honorable Sergio Tapia, Presiding Judge of LA Superior Court.

Today is Law Day.

I will admit to you that although Law Day started in 1958, until earlier this week, I had never heard of it.

I guess I assumed every day was Law Day. Perhaps I took the rule of law for granted.

Raise your hand if you’re a lawyer.

So for all of us lawyers, we’ve already taken an oath to support the constitution, to faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney to the best of our ability, and to strive to conduct ourselves at all times with dignity, courtesy and integrity.

We’re here to renew that oath because oaths are supposed to mean something and because joining in a collective action to say so means we are upholding the values of our profession and creating space for others to do the same.

I see many friends here today, but many of you don’t know me. I’m not a judge. I’m not a bar association leader.

I’m just a lawyer like you. I care about democracy, like you. And like you, I care that our systems aren’t working well in many ways, and I care about how to make them better.

So as I prepared today, I thought, what can I tell them that they don’t already know and believe?

Like Sarvenaz said, I clerked for Justice Ginsburg, and in 2018 I started a non-profit, The Civics Center, to make voter registration part of high school life. Too often young people are left out of conversations about the direction of the country and their communities because they are not registered to vote. But when they know how to register, and when they have access to quality civics education, they’re eager to have a voice and to make our democracy stronger.

I think you know this already. So what I want to talk about today comes down to stories.

First, everyone wants stories about RBG. She was a role model for me and I know for many of you.

What it was like to work for her was working for someone who knew her own mind, trusted her own judgment, put the people in the cases before her at the center of her thinking, cared to her core that our procedural rules must be fair, and worked all hours to get it right.

We can think now that she was destined to be a Supreme Court Justice. But that’s not right. She could not get a job after law school and had to work and organize and argue for changes in the law through which her own gifts could shine.

And it was that experience that made her one of the most patriotic people I know. She would say, of her own family’s experience in America, what’s the difference between a bookkeeper in the garment district and a Supreme Court Justice? One generation. She was talking about her mother and herself.

After she passed away in September 2020, the clerks were all invited to ceremonies in Washington, DC. It was the height of the pandemic. There was a memorial service at the Court during the day, and at night, the clerks took turns in pairs standing vigil in 20-minute shifts next to the casket at the top of the steps of the Court.

Many of you have probably stood where we stood that night.

My shift started at 10 pm. It was dark. It was quiet, except for the occasional siren and the water fountains in front of the court.

We looked out at the Capitol.

We didn’t know what the outcome would be of the 2020 election, just as we didn’t know in September 2024 what the outcome would be of the election that’s just past.

And it felt like a moment of great uncertainty. For our country and our democracy.

But then I took my eyes off the Capitol and looked down to the sidewalk in front of the Court. Nothing had prepared me for what I saw. I don’t know why it took me so long to notice.

But there they were. Streams of people, walking quietly by to pay their respects. They were in groups and alone. There were parents with their daughters and their sons. They were young and old. Dressed up and in flip flops and shorts. Some in wheelchairs. Some with scooters. Some lingered. Some went quickly by.

But they just kept coming the whole time I stood there, and all night long.

She was an unlikely figure to be such a hero.

She connected with people not because she was an extrovert. She wasn’t.

But because she was authentic, always did her best, overcame great obstacles, and put her values in front of the world for all to see.

And when I think of that day, I think of my own responsibility. The responsibility of all of us really, to stand up for what we believe in and not to underestimate our own power to make a difference.

Now, I want to tell you about Fiona. Fiona is a high school student in Claremont, California. We have more than 50 school districts with high schools in LA County, and at the start of the last school year, Claremont was dead last in terms of voter registration rates for 18-year-olds.

Well, Fiona had an AP government teacher named Beth. Beth was interested in getting her students involved and in teaching them about ways they could have an impact. Real civics education.

Beth found my organization, The Civics Center, got trained in supporting students to run a voter registration drive, and she recruited Fiona to be a student leader.

Fiona swallowed it whole. She hadn’t known you have to register in order to vote. She said of course everyone should register.

She organized her peers, made a slide deck, went classroom to classroom and got 700 students at Claremont high school registered to vote.

Claremont went from last to top 15% because Fiona said to herself, maybe I can’t do everything, but I can do this, and because she had Beth as her teacher to give her tools and encouragement and to cheer her on.

All of us have something we can work on, and that we can make better, from our law firms, to our universities, to the schools in our neighborhoods, to the courts and judges we count on to administer justice fairly and without fear.

The thing is to start. And the thing is to keep going. And the thing is to work together, to not get discouraged, to not let the overwhelming velocity of change and efforts to undermine core values turn into cynicism and paralysis.

If you don’t think you can be like RBG, I get it. Be like Fiona. Or be like her teacher Beth. Point others in the direction where they can make a difference.

Adrienne LaFrance is the executive editor of the Atlantic. Last week she had an article. The topic was that the clock is ticking for American democracy and freedom. “It’s later than you think,” she wrote, “but it’s not too late.”

She has a knack for short sentences, and I like these two: “Capitulation is contagious.… But so, too, is courage.”

So as we’re re-taking the oath that we all came here to take, let's think of all the courageous acts, large and small, that got us here today.

And let’s think about what our own oath is asking of us right now.