Education / Schools, Supreme Court

What Law Students and Young Attorneys Can Take Away From Chief Justice Roberts’s Unconventional Advice

Columnist Renwei Chung highlights key life lessons from the Chief Justice's recent remarks.

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Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., speaking at the Cardigan Mountain School (via YouTube).

“Young slung, hung here, showed that a person from here / With a little ambition, just what we can become here / And as the father pass the story down to his son’s ears / Young’ll get younger every year, yeah.” — Jay Z

Earlier this week, Kathryn Rubino suggested in these pages that Chief Justice John Roberts might have thrown some shade at President Donald Trump in the commencement address that Roberts gave at his son’s middle-school graduation from the elite Cardigan Mountain School.

Chief Justice Roberts’s recent speech was picked up by The Washington Post, SCOTUSblog, Quartz, and ATL, among numerous other outlets. And for good reason.

At the time it was given, the Chief Justice’s speech didn’t receive much fanfare, but after being recorded and uploaded to YouTube by the school, it received wide praise.

While commencement speakers normally wish their audience immeasurable success, Roberts unconventionally wished Cardigan’s young graduates a bit of a tougher lot in life.

Chief Justice Roberts may have aimed his advice at the kids, and possibly Donald Trump, but surely we as young professionals can learn a thing or two from his wise words as well.

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Here are my top-ten takeaways for law students and young attorneys from last month’s address:

  1. Your success in life is not just about you. It is about your parents (and guardians) and what they have sacrificed to bring you to this point. If you are going to look forward, to figure out where you are going, it is good to know where you have been and to look back as well. It was not just success, but not being afraid to fail that brought you to this point.

  2. From time to time, in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.

  3. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time, so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck again, from time to time, so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and the failure of others is not completely deserved either.

  4. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship.

  5. I hope you will be ignored, so you know the importance of listening to others. And I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion.

  6. Whether I wish these things or not, they are going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend on your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.

  7. In a certain sense, you should not be yourself, you should try to become something better. People say “be yourself” because they want you to resist the impulse to conform to what others want you to be. But you can’t be yourself if you don’t know you are. And you can’t learn who you are, unless you think about it.

  8. One important clue to living a good life is to not to try to live ‘the good life.’

  9. The last bit of advice I’ll give you is very simple, but I think it could make a big difference in your life. Once a week, you should write a note to someone, not an email, a note on a piece of paper. It will take you exactly ten minutes. By the end of the school year, you will have sent notes to forty people. Forty people will feel a little more special because you did. And they will think you are very special because of what you did. Now what else is going to carry that dividend during your time at school?

Chief Justice Roberts ended his speech by reading some historic lyrics:

These lyrics are from the great American philosopher Bob Dylan. They are almost fifty years old. He wrote them for his son Jesse, who he was missing while he was on tour.

They list the hopes that a parent might have for a son and for a daughter. They are also good goals for a son and a daughter.

The wishes are beautiful, timeless, and universal. They are good and true, except for one. It is the wish that gives the song its title and its refrain. That wish is a parent’s lament. It is not a good wish. So these are the lyrics from ‘Forever Young,’ by Bob Dylan:

May God bless and keep you always / May your wishes all come true / May you always do for others / And let others do for you / May you build a ladder to the stars / And climb on every rung / May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous / May you grow up to be true / May you always know the truth / And see the lights surrounding you / May you always be courageous / Stand upright and be strong / May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy / May your feet always be swift / May you have a strong foundation / When the winds of changes shift / May your heart always be joyful / May your song always be sung / May you stay forever young.

Another memorable moment came from the Head of Cardigan Mountain School, Christopher D. Day. When introducing Chief Justice Roberts, Day announced that the Chief Justice had included a personally signed, pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution in each student’s diploma packet.

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Day then urged each student to read it, which made many in the audience—who clearly picked up on the intertextuality of Day’s comments—laugh out loud.

Maybe the Chief Justice wasn’t trying to throw shade at Donald Trump, but the Head of Cardigan Mountain School surely fired a solid subtweet.

Earlier: Is The Chief Justice Throwing Shade At Donald Trump?

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist for Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.

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