Judge Edward R. Finch Law Day Speech Awards
Seconnd Place: Law Day 1999
Life Is Not Fair
Mary Fisher
Law Day Luncheon, Palm Beach County Bar Association
Friday, May 7, 1999
West Palm Beach, FL
Thank you very much, John, and thanks to all of you for that warm welcome.
Forty years ago - 41, to be exact - President Eisenhower established Law Day USA. A few years later a Joint Resolution of Congress confirmed his act. It was, and still is, a lofty idea: that a time should be set aside not merely to honor but to inspire American confidence in a shared concept of justice, that is, in American law.
That the idea was first advanced not by a practicing attorney, but by a war hero, makes sense. Eisenhower knew the cost paid for America’s concept of justice. He’d seen how high the price had become in stacks of young bodies strewn across the beaches of Normandy and rows of fresh graves dug into the fields of Europe.
Four decades later, we gather in the comfort of each other’s company. We are not far from alleyways strewn with evidence of prostitution and addiction. We are safe here, attorneys and jurists, journalists and students, but we are also huddled in the shadow of Littleton, Colorado, within the echo of gunshots from closer neighborhoods.
If there is any single truth we all know, no matter our age, it is this: Life is not fair. It’s not fair that the weak are ruled by the strong, that the rich have power over the poor.
A hit-and-run driver takes an innocent child of 3, while a 20-year-old murderer is let go on a technicality. Life is not fair.
You get a call from your ex-husband suggesting you get a test for AIDS. You do. And you soon realize that your children are likely to become orphans. Life is not fair.
The American system of law is not able to repair all the injustices that befall those of us who are human. But what enables us to endure the unfairness is the belief that we are important members of a community held together by law, by rules that protect whatever fairness is possible.
Until a few weeks ago, I would have said that the idea of community was too obscure to warrant a speech - certainly it didn’t deserve a speech here, today. But in the week following the massacre at Columbine Public High School in Littleton, Colorado, I spent more than a few hours reflecting on what had happened.
I did that, of course as a mother who has AIDS - because that’s who I am. I have struggled for so many years not only to stay alive, but also to enable others to live; how could life be taken so lightly that killers would laugh while taking it from others.
But the agonizing questions of Columbine go deeper: How could two young men become so enthralled with all that Eisenhower had fought, with the regime that led us to Normandy and the horrors that we uncovered at Dachau?
The children who so carefully planned, and plotted, and finally killed other children in that cafeteria - they were on a suicide mission. From the hour they woke that morning, they were intent not only on taking the lives of others, but on giving up their own as well. What is it that gave their own lives so little meaning?
The only explanation I can imagine is this: They realized that life is not fair, and they decided to do something about it. They would end the taunting of others; they would finish their brief careers in a blaze of gunfire, they would balance the scales of high school justice in one, bloody sweep. They would fix the unfairness themselves.
Against the backdrop of Columbine, let me say a few words first to those who are the younger members of my audience.
I must, first, congratulate the students and young adults gathered today. Your presence is, in itself, a testimony to the fact that you are seen by others as a leader of your student community. I congratulate you on all that you have accomplished.
Despite the popular image of “innocent childhood,” I know these are not the easiest days of your life. Some adults pretend that the fears and terrors of adolescence are not as real or important as the grim panic, which grips adult souls. That’s nonsense. You and I know it’s nonsense. And Columbine should have shown us all that it’s nonsense.
I have sons. They have already lost their father to AIDS, and they know my diagnosis. My son, Max, knows a darkness that I, his mother, can hardly fathom. He has worries he cannot express and fears I cannot reach. In his lighter moments, he lifts his whole world with creative joy; in his darkest hours, life is hardly worth living. I would gladly trade my life for his joy, but I can’t. It’s not within my power. And Max has a younger brother, Zachary, who will face all the same challenges that his older brother has already encountered. What my sons know, and what all the students here today know, is that life is not fair.
What I want my sons to learn from the community that surrounds us is that our goal as human beings is to make life as fair as we can. We are not called to give in to the unfairness, but to overcome it. We cannot cure every disease; but when we can, we must. We cannot repair a rape or undo a murder; but where we can prevent them, we must. Even their mother cannot cure AIDS or prejudice, but I can spend my life doing what I can.
Our goal, young and old, is to create fairness. If we, as adults, do not model that goal; if we are not showing a passion both for you and for that purpose, then we are failing. And you should be bold in holding us accountable. I would only ask that you also judge us with some compassion. Because if we are to change, as adults in this society, we must also have some reason to hope.
Many of the adults here today have graduated from law school and passed the bar; some have achieved partner-status and a few have taken seats on the bench. I congratulate you as well. But I also remind you that the rate of suicide is higher among attorneys and jurists in this nation than most other professional groups.
For a while, I thought low self-esteem among American attorneys merely reflected your sagging popularity ratings. “The O.J. Trial” and other high-profile judicial circuses did little to raise America’s view of lawyers. The best thing that’s happened to popularity ratings of America’s lawyers was House Republicans.
But whatever the polls tell you, what’s clear is that our communities are in desperate need of justice. Our neighborhoods and businesses, congregations and schools, need a renewed confidence in law and some hope of fairness. What has begun to fade is not merely the image of lawyers, but the image of law. What’s needed is the confidence that fairness is within reach, if we will work for it; that justice is available, if we will pursue it; and , therefore, that the profession of law is a profession of honor, critical to the life of our communities and worthy of admiration.
So here we are at the final Law Day of this century. Students and attorneys have gathered to be encouraged for their gifts of leadership. And its is the community - what Martin Luther King called “the beloved community” - that we must lead.
During the course of this century we adults created what is most generously described as “virtual community.” Technology has changed our lives at home and work. We struggle as families to get one meal together a day. Members of families no longer gather around the piano to sing songs in four-part harmony; we put on headsets that isolate us. Children are weaned on video games and nurtured by video music. Instead of mother and father to occupy time and set the example, we have television and the Internet.
Even the practice of law has changed fundamentally. We no longer meet at the courthouse steps as once we did, we and the opposing counsel. We rarely enter the judge’s chamber together. The personal relationships which enabled us to sustain our oaths as public citizens, and as advocates, and as officers of the court - the personal knowledge of the opposing counsel as a human being who shares our community - largely has been replaced by e-mail, and voicemail, and the telephone.
Whether we are grade school students or retired attorney, mothers with AIDS or journalists with a story due - as human beings, we need community…especially when we realize that life is not fair. Because if we have no community, no set of standards and people able to sustain them, then unfairness and injustice and brutality will win.
Our confidence in justice is, at its core, confidence in community. Our belief that life is worth living - that a suicide mission at age 18 no sense - our belief that life is worth living is our belief in community, our knowledge that we have a people and a place and a purpose.
Some of you have been waiting for a speech on AIDS. You just heard it. Because AIDS in America, like violence in school cafeterias, will only be cured when the community says, “This is our crisis, and we will address it.” And, thus far, the American community has not said that.
When the community values its children, it will show them how hard we work to make their lives fair. When the community values those who fall before wanton violence or terminal illness, it will show them how aggressively we seek their healing. It will take tangible evidence.
Those with AIDS see little such evidence. America believes the virus has been cured; it has not. For the first time in more than a decade, AIDS means so little to political fortunes that it was not mentioned in this year’s State of the Union address. I noticed, because my life is hanging on the need of evidence that the community still cares.
Strange as it may seem, I truly understand why (for example) young African Americans in overwhelming proportions believe that “the law” is a device for others to rule, not a set of rules assuring them justice. They do not doubt the value of law, or of justice; they merely doubt that the community values them. I understand that. If you had AIDS, so would you.
If you want to extend my life, change theirs, and enrich your own; if we want, together, to see no more Columbines, no more Oklahoma Cities, no more rising rates of suicide and homicide and AIDS; if we want to “inspire American confidence in a shared concept of justice, that is, in American law” - I have a simple prescription: Build community.
If we devote ourselves to that task, we will also devote ourselves to one another. Then our children will hold a vision that inspires us, our attorneys will teach justice that sustains us, and each of us will know that life, however brief, has meaning.
What I pray for my children is not my long life, but the reality of a community. A community would give them what even a mother cannot: a people, and a place, and a purpose. If I could promise them that, then I could promise you this: That when you build such a community, and welcome in my children, you will hear both God and I whispering from the halls of heaven, “Grace to you and peace.”
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