Each year, Orientation and Commencement serve as meaningful bookends for the academic year—ways to welcome new students and then to celebrate the transition of another talented class into the profession. Every time I stand at that Commencement podium and look out over an ocean of proud friends and families waiting to embrace their graduates, I am grateful for our intellectually engaged, compassionate, and ethically grounded community.
The close of the year also provides an opportunity for reflection and for recommitment to the best ideals of the profession. This year, the Class of 2025 heard a particularly resonant message from our Commencement speaker, Bob Casey, the former US Senator from Pennsylvania. Senator Casey powerfully underscored the challenges facing our democracy, with a focus on the crucial role of judicial independence. He told our graduates that, beyond their vital roles as advocates and officers of the court, “each of you as lawyers will have additional and crucial responsibilities, including serving as guardians of an independent judiciary, which safeguards the rule of law.”
His words emphasized that the rule of law is not self-sustaining; it requires vigilant protection, particularly when its strength is tested. The independence and integrity of our judiciary is a cornerstone of this framework, as Senator Casey highlighted, ensuring that justice is administered impartially and free from undue influence or intimidation.
The responsibility that Senator Casey described fully aligns with our institutional ethos and obligation: to ensure that every attorney is, in the words of the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct, an “officer of the legal system” and a “public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.” This professional duty transcends partisan lines, and it demands a steadfast commitment to ensuring that the rule of law applies equally to all.
“[Our] mission compels us to cultivate lawyers who are not only skilled practitioners but also ethical leaders, ready to defend the principles of justice and fairness and to ensure that they apply to even the most marginalized.”
Dean Odette Lienau
At BC Law, we work very hard to prepare our students for this profound responsibility. Our commitment, deeply informed by our Jesuit, Catholic heritage, calls us to uphold—in the phrasing of the late Pope Francis—the “infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.” This mission compels us to cultivate lawyers who are not only skilled practitioners but also ethical leaders, ready to defend the principles of justice and fairness and to ensure that they apply to even the most marginalized.
Our newest alumni step into a world that urgently needs their dedication to these ideals. Whether they find themselves in large firms, public interest organizations, government service, or business, the call to be “guardians of an independent judiciary” and champions of the rule of law remains constant. The sometimes abstract concept of justice will become concrete through their actions, their integrity, and their willingness to stand up for the highest standards of our profession.
As we reflect on the challenges and opportunities ahead, Senator Casey’s message speaks to our shared resolve. Our mission—to foster lawyers dedicated to the greater good—has never been more vital. I hope our newest graduates are buoyed by those who have taken this journey with them: their classmates, professors, the extended BC Law family, and their families and friends. And I hope they are inspired by the legacies of all those who came before them. I draw encouragement from the legal community’s dedication to protecting the institutions that safeguard our democracy and to building a more just and equitable world. The future of our legal system, and the endurance of the rule of law, depends upon these efforts.