The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Janet T. Mills is the governor of Maine. This column is adapted from the commencement address she gave to graduates of the University of Maine School of Law on May 24.
Before his untimely death, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley said he had been visited by a ghost who planted a rhetorical question in his head: “How long,” the spirit asked, “do you intend to remain content?”
That question should resonate in the mind of every lawyer, judge and public official in today’s strange and difficult world. It is a question you will face in the coming months of thinking, writing, preparing for the bar exam and in many years ahead — litigating, negotiating, analyzing, as you find satisfaction in solving problems large and small, and diminishing, not worsening, conflicts in society — all while paying back school loans and raising a family in a state that boasts of a friendly bar who are ready to advise, mentor and counsel you.
It is a question too that weighed heavily on the minds of my class at Maine Law School nearly five decades ago.
The Vietnam War had finally come to an end; the protests were over, and we looked forward to peace in our time. The Supreme Court had declared we had the constitutional right to birth control and the right to abortion. We studied the Equal Pay Act, Title VI, Title VII and the freshly minted Title IX.
We watched in awe as Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record, Muhammed Ali knocked out George Foreman in the “Rumble in the Jungle,” and the Red Sox won the pennant.
At Maine Law School, we navigated a future in the practice of law when few women had seen the inside of a courtroom. But there was Bob Marley telling us, “Get Up, Stand Up, Stand up for Your Rights!”
We watched too as the moral compass of the law was diverted from its North Star by the pranks and practices, the crimes and cover-ups, of those who valued political loyalty over their duty to the courts and to the Constitution. The president of the United States, for the first time in American history, had been forced to resign. Eleven prominent lawyers lost their license to practice law, their livelihood; and the attorney general of the United States had gone to prison, all because of the national scandal we refer to very simply as “Watergate” — a piece of history that seems so long ago but that carries some currency today.
In our study carrels at the old law school, we often wondered: What would have happened if Judge John Sirica had not questioned the Watergate burglars’ claim that they had acted alone? Or if he had not ordered the president to surrender those White House tapes to the special prosecutor? Or if the Supreme Court had allowed the president to withhold the recordings that, in the end, would bring his presidency down? The judicial branch of the United States stood up to the executive when it needed to and fulfilled its co-equal role as defined by our nation’s founders.
The Constitution survived, and it was those who refused to “remain content” who changed the course of American history.
In the shadow of that crisis, ethics dominated our normal law school discourse, whether in Contracts or Torts or Evidence or Trusts and Estates. Our degree brought with it a heightened respect for the integrity of the law and for the legitimacy and independence of the judiciary.
And, although we had only one female teacher then — the first woman professor at the law school — and although we were the first class to be comprised of more than a handful of women, and although many firms refused to hire women graduates, it was soon thereafter that we began to swell the ranks of the law school classrooms, the practices, the prosecutors’ offices and even the bench. We had broken into the law. And we did not “intend to remain content.”
Today the news is filled with challenges to the legal profession and to the role and authority of the judiciary. In April, on behalf of a three-judge court of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee, described the looming crisis with some eloquent but disturbing words, words that hearken back to our law school lessons of the 1970’s:
“Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both,” he wrote. “… The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time, history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.”
It will fall to you to protect the institutions which this senior jurist implores us to save, so long as you do not long “intend to remain content.”
Now you will soon find that there are two ways to practice law: You can be the lawyer who finds a means to accomplish a client’s goals at all costs, even when the ends may not be justified, sometimes cutting corners as those Watergate lawyers did, or like the lawyer ads on TV today that boast, “We win!” and “We do whatever it takes!”
Or you can be the lawyer who identifies the legal avenues, the paths and the impediments, who counsels and steers the client away from bad conduct and who shines a light on a better course of action, enshrining legitimacy in the law.
My father was of the latter type.
He was a burly country lawyer who sometimes took chickens in trade for a fee. A World War II veteran, who had bicycled alone through Europe in 1937 before the war, he talked often about the need to protect against the rise of dictatorships. He was an amateur boxer and a diehard fan of the underdog Red Sox.
One bitter cold morning he took me out to deliver my newspapers along the main street of our small town. He told me he had defended a man with a broken arm who was threatened with jail because he couldn’t pay a medical bill. A true Mainer, old-time Republican and friend of Sen. Margaret Chase Smith of Skowhegan — the first person to challenge Joseph McCarthy back in 1950 — my father told me it was important in life to stand up for people who couldn’t fend for themselves. He would often say, “You can’t let bullies have their way. They never stop.”
My father was not one who ever intended to “remain content.”
It was the echo of his voice I heard that February morning when the president of the United States unexpectedly confronted me at the White House. When he threatened to cut off all federal funds for our small state unless I agreed with him, I responded as simply as I could, “I’m complying with state and federal laws.” Then when he declared, “I’m, er, we are the federal law,” I said the only thing I knew to say, what I believed any country lawyer would say: “See you in court.”
The president’s demand, the impermissible threat in his words, the attempt to govern by intimidation — this is not what the founders meant when they wrote the Constitution; it is, in fact, the very thing they sought to avoid when they divided power among three co-equal branches of government. As each of you knows, it is not the president who makes the law; it’s Congress. The chief executive may not create a law, amend a law, or repeal a law by tweet, executive order or press release. His job is simply to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
So, in April, when the federal government froze funding for Maine’s school lunch program for 172,000 children, claiming we violated Title IX but citing no authority, we fought back. We went to court, and the court stopped them. You can’t defund one program because you disagree with the state on another matter. It’s the law.
Since that time, there have been many other threats across the country, more bullying towards businesses, colleges, scientists, researchers; towards unions, veterans, and women; threats to Social Security; threats to health care, medical research and education, threats towards states and countries large and small.
We cannot let intimidation win the day. We cannot be afraid to stand up for the rule of law. We cannot long “intend to remain content.”
For the law is the greatest achievement of our society, the thing that protects all of us, but especially the weak and the vulnerable, those who cannot stand up for themselves. If we stop believing in that great equalizer, the Constitution, if we give up, if we lose faith, then we lose the very thing that protects every one of us, at a time when we need it most.
A rusty old bicycle sits in my barn with flattened tires, bent pedals, worn handlebars. It bears the tattered flags of countries that millions once called home in the Europe of 1937. It is because people like my father stood up and defended America — then and now a great country — that we must not bend to the will of anyone who would rule by intimidation and not follow the law, whether in 1950, in 1974, in 2025, or in any other time in the future of our nation.
Democracy is never lost to us. It is just sometimes not easy to fight for, hard to see the end of the fight. But, as my father warned, we “can’t let bullies have their way; they never stop.”
Now more than ever before, this country needs capable lawyers with morals and conviction. How long will you intend to remain content? Will you act before history scripts “the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been?”
The paper you receive today should not hang dryly on some sparse library wall; it must become instead a license to discover those better paths, a key to creating solutions for clients and communities great and small.
With this degree, you must never simply remain content, but instead be inspired to make a difference, be mindful to solve problems and be vigilant to preserve the Constitution of the United States and of our state against every threat.
You will have your moment. And whenever and however you do stand up, believe me, you will count for more than you think. Our country will stand taller. Our country will be stronger. The rule of law will thrive. Your children and your grandchildren will be proud of you, the way I hope my father is proud of me today.
Thank you from the proud holder of Maine Bar License Number 1677. And congratulations to the class of 2025!
I will see you in court!
