But the truth is my decision to attend law school was by no means assured. I felt pulled in a million different directions. My graduating class at Wellesley was the class of 1969, a time of great change and anguish for America. My time as an undergraduate coincided with years of cultural tumult, controversy, and tragedy, including the escalation of the Vietnam War, the withdrawal of President Johnson from the presidential race and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.
All you had to do was turn on a television set to see that there was so much going wrong in America. But in my young and idealistic mind, that meant there were so many different ways a young person like me could make something right. There was a spirit of civic involvement—of civic action—that permeated the campus and filled me with a sense of possibility, despite the social upheaval that marked the late 1960s.
There was, however, one thing I knew for sure. I wanted to participate in public life as an activist and a citizen. I believed in our country and our democratic institutions—and that you could achieve a lot of good by participating. In the years since, as a lawyer, as First Lady and as senator from New York, that faith has only grown. In the end, the decision to apply and attend law school was for me an expression of that belief: the system can be changed from within.
The law can be an incredible vehicle for social change—and lawyers are at the wheel. I think of Brown v. Board of Education and the Supreme Court cases that would follow, of the Voting Rights Act. In fact, in the Senate, we just renewed the Voting Rights Act, a reminder of the work that remains to ensure that every citizen’s constitutional rights are safeguarded. (Alas, the work of public-interest lawyers is never done.)
I also reflect on my personal experiences: the inspiring lawyers I’ve met, like Marian Wright Edelman who founded the Children’s Defense Fund, and the opportunities I’ve had to serve the public interest as a lawyer. One of my first jobs after leaving law school was gathering information about the Nixon administration’s failure to enforce the legal ban on tax-exempt status for private segregated academies. These schools had sprung up in the South in an effort to avoid court-ordered integration of public schools. I remember traveling to Atlanta to meet with the dedicated, passionate lawyers and civil rights workers who were compiling evidence to prove that these schools were created solely to avoid the Constitutional and moral mandate.
In the end, the law is a profession unlike any other. By sheer strength of argument you can right wrongs, protect society against abuse and serve the public good. At its best, law can be a field where your belief in justice can become justice itself. Is the law right for everybody? Of course not. But I can honestly look back and say that my decision to become a lawyer was one of the most important in my life, affording me so many chances to learn, give back, find my own strengths and use them well.
Today, these many years since I chose to become a lawyer, America faces a new set of challenges—and will require a new generation’s efforts to help meet them.
In the past five years, we have experienced great tragedy. We witnessed the deadliest attack on our soil in the history of the country. Our nation was changed forever, and you came of age and tried to begin figuring out your path even as our nation seemed to find itself on less sure footing. I also see in your generation much of what I saw in my own, including a renewed commitment to service. You need only look to AmeriCorps, Teach for America, and the focus on public interest at our nation’s law schools to see this for yourself.
Now it’s your turn to find your footing by helping America find hers. And of course, you have difficult decisions to make about how you will participate, about how you’ll use your talents to be the best citizen you can be.
The path to giving back is not always the easiest one to follow—or even, at times, easy to see. But each of us has an opportunity to use our talents and blessings to help others. Each of us has a duty to one another. The law is one way—but by no means the only way—to fulfill that duty. You can make it your life or at least part of your daily life, with pro bono work, for example. As you look past your college careers, as you consider a career in law and the myriad opportunities that lie ahead, I’ll leave you with this piece of sage advice passed on by the wise and learned philosopher—and Yankees Hall-of-Famer—Yogi Berra:
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
