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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer Urges Civility, Improved Education at ABA Opening Assembly
By Martha Heil
ABA News Service
Aug. 6, 2011
TORONTO — The Opening Assembly of the American Bar Association’s Annual Meeting this evening was a celebration of unity between Canada and the United States, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer stirred the crowd at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music with calls for civility, better education and respect for the Rule of Law.
“We want good lawyers to be in a profession and nation that reflects civility,” said Breyer. “We have to begin here.”
“We learn a lot from our Canadian brothers and sisters,” said ABA President Stephen N. Zack, as he opened the event. “They have a word in their lawyers’ oath that is sometimes oddly missing from American lawyers’ oaths, and that word is civility. In part it reads, ‘In all things I shall conduct myself with honesty, with integrity, with civility.’”
The American and Canadian bar associations had hours before signed a historic agreement to conduct joint projects and to collaborate.
Zack pointed to an example of collaboration that crosses political boundaries for a common good — lawyers David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, who were opposing counsel on Bush v. Gore, but who came together to fight California’s Proposition 8.
“Let us rededicate ourselves to the proposition that words matter, how we treat others matters and how others see us matters,” Zack said. “Not just for ourselves, but for generations to come.”
Breyer called on lawyers to advocate for better public education, and to give future U.S. citizens the information and tools they need to create a just future for themselves. “Three hundred and eight million people in the U.S. are not lawyers,” he said. He stressed the need for improved education in how government and law work.
Breyer cited past victories for the Rule of Law, such as when former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower called in the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army to protect children as they walked into a newly integrated public school in Arkansas.
This meeting marked the 75th year of the ABA’s House of Delegates. The House is the association’s 566-member policy-making body of elected representatives from the 50 states, the Virgin Islands and Guam, as well as local, topic-specific and at-large members.
