Dean Nicholas Kasirer's address to the Law Class of 2009
Madam Principal, join me in celebrating this class with a
resounding “Bravo” – it’s a superbly transsystemic word that works
in the civil law and the common law, and that sends the right
message in English or in French – bravo à la promotion
2009! Bravo à vous, mes chers diplômés, et bravo à vos
familles et vos amis qui participent pleinement à votre succès de
ce matin. Bravo from your professors at the Faculty of Law who
are as proud as punch of your achievements and for every one of
those new legal letters -- BCL, LLB, LLM, DCL -- that you can, with
the blessing of the Chancellor and the Provost, proudly string
after your name as you leave this great and happy ceremony.
We all know that the ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ scroll that you deservedly clutch in
your hands this morning didn’t come easily: it represents years of
the nobility of learning, to be sure, but hundreds of frayed
casebooks and inkless high-lighters as well, several years of
hiking up Peel Street in a sweat, and hours in patient explanation
to your grandmother, who just wanted you to become a lawyer, about
what “transsystemic” means. And our ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ degree stands as well
for 150 new friends-for-life in the Class of 2009, as your
valedictorian Lilly Lo Manto, has just made so wonderfully
plain. And for your professors and me, it is your personal
stake in the fortunes of Old Chancellor Day Hall, in its storied
past and its bright future.
Vous et moi, nous savons fort bien, Ă partir de ces quelques
années que nous venons de passer ensemble, toute la valeur –
patrimoniale et, oui, extrapatrimoniale – que ce bout de papier
incarne. But the fullest promise of your degree is, I think,
best explained to your parents and friends gathered today with you
by reference to two qualities that characterize this class so
perfectly, and which partake of the highest aspirations of a ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ
legal education. Every class is extraordinary, but my
colleagues and I cannot help but observe a special public virtue in
the Class of 2009, as well as a sort of nomadic caste of mind
evinced by students at this particular convocation. And these
personal qualities of public generosity and free-spiritedness are
wonderfully embodied by two of our graduates who share today’s
stage with you on this glorious day. Our newest honorary
doctorant, Professor Richard Buxbaum, is a nomadic comparative
lawyer in a fine ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ tradition even if he has never studied in
Chancellor Day Hall. And no-one stands for ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ generosity
better than the profoundly pro-bono Richard Pound, B.C.L. 1967 who,
after ten years in office as our Chancellor presides over his last
Law convocation this morning. Allow me to say a few words
celebrating them in celebration of you. Les hommages que
j’offre à MM. Buxbaum et Pound sont aussi, donc, des hommages
offerts Ă la promotion 2009.
Richard Buxbaum has carved out a remarkable scholarly career –
something of a model ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ career – by defying the ordinary
territorial constraints that jurists sometimes impose on themselves
when they take too narrow a view of the law they study and
practice. His pioneer teaching in the law of the European
Union, his interests in corporations law that took him to Germany
and beyond, and his taste for international economic law have all
challenged the national categories and ideas that dominate American
legal culture and show us that Professor Buxbaum was a
trans-systemic legal scholar long before that expression was coined
at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ. During a career of 40 years of teaching law at
U.C. Berkeley, Professor Buxbaum embraced an approach to legal
scholarship predicated on what might be called an epistemology of
encounter – that is to say a way of knowing the law that places
difference and comparison at centre stage. Richard Buxbaum’s
nomadic life in the law has been lived, comparatively speaking, in
the same way that ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ students place the encounter of the civil
law and the common law at the core of the trans-systemic mission,
and the dialogue between French and English at the centre of our
not-so-passively bilingual life on Peel Street. Allow us this
vanity, Professor Buxbaum, in seeing in your work at the head of
the American comparative legal academy, something that resonates
specially at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ. Like you, ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ graduates have,
throughout their studies, thrown over the ordinary boundaries of
jurisdictional geography, and aspired to understand a pluralistic,
transcendent, non-parochial dimension in the law. The ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ
degree is of course a passport of sorts to an international career
like the one pursued with such success by Richard Buxbaum.Â
But as importantly, it is an invitation to think expansively about
legal ideas, to defy exclusively state-made perspectives on law in
pursuit of a nomadic jurisprudence that one might just as well
explore in Montreal as in Singapore, in Woodstock, Ontario or San
Francisco. Et peut-être mieux à Montréal que partout
ailleurs …
Et si on la juge sur la base de son immense engagement dans la
vie parascolaire de l’UniversitĂ© ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ, la promotion 2009 estime
que sa formation juridique déborde non seulement les frontières
nationales mais aussi celles des salles de cours locales. Je
tiens à souligner, à côté de la pensée juridique nomade qui habite
nos diplômés, un esprit d’entraide qui justifie un mot de
reconnaissance de la part de tous vos professeurs pour vos riches
contributions Ă la vie intellectuelle de la FacultĂ© de droit.Â
Il y a une culture de don qui anime cette belle promotion et qui se
vĂ©rifie dans la communautĂ© tricotĂ©e-serrĂ©e que vous avez crĂ©Ă© Ă
3644 Peel dans ces trois ou quatre dernières années. This
sense of public virtue is part of the ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ degree too, and is the
source of special pride for us as university professors and,
thinking of your futures, of profound optimism for us as
citizens.Â
Je me permets de me tourner vers notre chancelier Richard Pound
– comme vous un fier diplômé de la Faculté de droit de l’Université
ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ – qui offre, par sa carrière hors norme, une piste
d’explication pour la générosité exemplaire de la promotion
2009. Certes, M. Pound a connu un succès sans commune mesure
dans le secteur privĂ© en tant qu’avocat fiscaliste respectĂ©.Â
Mais de concert avec cette activité professionnelle, il a toujours
mené une pratique parallèle, exercée « pro bono », pour le bien
public. Un athlète hors pair dans son sport préféré de
natation, M. Pound s’est impliqué, dès la fin de ses exploits dans
la piscine olympique, dans la promotion du sport amateur au Canada
et à l’international. Dans ses moments de loisirs, il s’est
donné une réputation internationale comme bénévole au service du
mouvement olympique et, plus récemment, par son travail inlassable
au soutien de l’intégrité dans le sport en militant contre le
dopage. Mais c’est Ă l’UniversitĂ© ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ que Me Pound a fait
preuve d’une générosité qui, pour les diplômés de notre université,
ne peut que servir de modèle. Actif aux plus hauts niveaux
dans l’Association des anciens de ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ depuis 40 ans, il a Ă©tĂ©
successivement gouverneur, président du Conseil de l’université
avant de devenir, en 1999, le Chancelier de ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ. Par cette
activité olympienne, dans tous les sens du terme, Richard Pound
semble nous signaler que notre pleine satisfaction comme juriste
exige, à côté de l’activité centrée sur soi-même, une forte action
civique posée, en vue d’aider son prochain.
Mr Chancellor, let me give you a taste of how members of the class
of 2009 have championed the public good in their moments of
leisure. These are the students that have lit up the ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Legal
Information Clinic; set young scholarly journals on health law and
sustainable development law on firm financial and intellectual
footing; published 12 numbers of the venerable ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Law Journal,
the oldest student-founded law review in this country; they have
laboured long hours on Innocence ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ; gone to press as Quid Novi
and on the ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ airwaves with Legal Ease; they turned to the
theatre with Actus Reus; they have ensured that the Human Rights
Working Group and the Black Law Students Association remain going
concerns. The class of 2009 reached out to high school students and
to aboriginal communities in bold student initiatives to improve
accessibility to legal education and access to justice. They
consolidated a vibrant Graduates Law Student Association; they
enlivened the life of the Faculty with dozens of clubs and
associations, from Disabilities and the Law to the Association of
ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Arab Law Students, from OUTLAW ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ to Pro Bono ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ,
from intra-mural hockey to the Jewish Law Students Association.
They have Women Caucus-ed, Skit-Nite-d and Coffee House-d beyond
the call of duty. All of this energy makes the course aux stages
seem to be a sleepy affair, but my spies tell me that this class
excelled there as elsewhere.
The history of the Faculty is replete with graduates who led
public-spirited lives like Dick Pound while maintaining active law
practices in the private sector. One of the first graduates,
Alexander Morris, B.C.L. 1850, whose law office was a veritable
social service agency for Quebec, helping establish the province’s
first schools and hospitals; Samuel W. Jacobs, B.C.L. 1893,
spearheaded an effort to help women enter the legal professions
from his law office and founded the Canadian Jewish Congress in his
spare time. Florence Seymour Bell, B.C.L. 1920, was refused
the right to appear before the Quebec courts, and then devoted her
life, after hours, to the National Association of Women Lawyers.
There are even graduates who set the bar high for Dick Pound –
think of Charles Peers Davidson, B.C.L. 1863, an avid sportsman who
was knighted for his public service. Mr Chancellor, a
knighthood would suit you just fine. Or Warren Chipman,
B.C.L. 1904, founder of the League of Nations Society and, like
Richard Pound, an accomplished author. Mr Chipman published a
translation of Dante’s Inferno with Oxford University Press when he
was 81 years old. Un défi, même pour vous, M. le
chancelier!
Graduates of this great Faculty with whom I have had the delight to
work over recent months are equally engaged trying to make the
legal community better serve the public. Take the example of
Brian Pel, LL.B. 1985 – an accomplished Toronto tax lawyer who
received the James Robb Award for Volunteer Work at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ for his
many years of service on the Board of the ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Law Journal.Â
Or ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Governor Emeritus Gordon Echenberg who has founded a
conference series and a Young Leaders Forum on international human
rights that has helped the Faculty assert one of its key strategic
priorities. J’ajouterai les noms de tous ces diplômés
rĂ©cents qui ont gĂ©nĂ©reusement conseillĂ© les Ă©quipes de ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ Ă des
grandes victoires dans le tribunal-Ă©cole Mignault et le concours
Charles Rousseau en droit international public. Elsewhere our
graduates are not only bâtonniers and law society benchers, but
chairs of hospital boards, libraries, charitable foundations, and
volunteers at the YMCA, pressing the organizational skills they
acquired as lawyers to advocate for the public good. This
work speaks to a life of sharing the gift of one’s legal education
– financed as it was in part by the whole community – in the public
square. And this fine ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ tradition reminds us that the
great dignity of a legal education could become a burden unless we
somehow give back to the community that helped us become
jurists.Â
Please allow me to make special mention this morning of emeritus
professors Jane Mathews Glenn and Pierre Gabriel Jobin – two of
this University’s nomadic, public-spirited, community
builders. Jane Glenn joined the Faculty in 1971 as its first
woman career law professor. Professor Glenn retired last
summer after thirty-seven years of accomplished service to others
at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ University during which time, in a thousand different
ways, she quietly helped so many community members with their
careers. Pierre Jobin est venu Ă ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ de l’UniversitĂ©
Laval au milieu des années 1970s, et il a adopté notre Faculté et
son culte comparatiste comme les siens avec empressement et
intelligence. Je tiens à applaudir l’exceptionnelle
contribution à la communauté de chercheurs en droit au pays faite
par le professeur Jobin, président et gentil animateur, depuis de
longues années, de l’Association québécoise de droit comparé.
Part of the identity of Jane Glenn and Pierre-Gabriel Jobin as law
teachers, like that of Dick Pound the law graduate and that evinced
by you during your stay here as law students, is wrapped up in an
ideal of engaged citizenship, pursued in the public
good. Â
Nomadisme et générosité : je vois une communauté de diplômés de
ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ qui cherche Ă vivre dans la citĂ©, guidĂ©e par un souci
constant de l’altérité – c’est bien le message que je retiens de
l’esprit qui anime la promotion de 2009, et qui trouve son reflet
dans les parcours de Richard Buxbaum et Richard Pound. Beyond
the training you now have in the common law and the civil law or
the expertise you have acquired through intense graduate study, the
true worth of a ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ degree is reflected in the values of
encounter with difference and generosity towards others that are
somehow bred into a ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ law student. All of this partakes
of an ethical aspiration to respect and honour others that is part
of ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵ’s deep culture. F.R. Scott, who began his fabled
teaching career 80 years ago exactly, said that the “function of
law is to teach tolerance”. With that great lesson in mind,
and with Richard Buxbaum and Richard Pound as role models, it
occurs to me that one way for this superbly public-spirited and
nomadic class of 2009 to stay close in the coming years is to
remain engaged, together, through your lifetime membership in the
community of graduates at ż´Ć¬ĘÓƵÂ
In closing, allow me to express the hope that the nomadic cast of
mind doesn’t take you away from us permanently, and you can be sure
that Principal Munroe-Blum and I have an idea or two about where
you might direct your generosity of spirit. In any event,
this superb class has marked the ten years of the transsystemic
program, and the five years of my own happy deanship, in very high
style. For that, and for much more, I offer profound thanks
to each of you.
Longue vie Ă la promotion 2009.
Nicholas Kasirer
Dean of Law