Legal Commentary

We did commencement on Sunday at Suffolk in the Bank of America Pavilion out by the Seaport, highlighted by a speech from the remarkable and charismatic Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey (and an alumnus of Stanford and the Yale Law School).

It seems to me you have to be a cynic or a spoilsport not to be impressed with (even if you don't enjoy) commencement exercises.  To borrow from Steve Winter at Wayne State, human beings are meaning-making machines.  I always have the following thought in the faculty robing tent (in addition to wondering how many rabbits died to make the hood and gown of my colleague who has a Ph.D. from Cambridge).  When my daughter was or four or five, we did a birthday party, but, as I recall, it was in an unusual venue (I think maybe the Cranbook Science Museum near Detroit).  I asked her if we need the paper cone party hats.  Her response was "Daddy, it wouldn't be a party without the hats!"

And every year about the time I have to put in my order with the registrar for the rented black doctoral gown (three stripes on the sleeves) with the purple (for law) and cardinal (for Stanford) hood, I think again that I would really like to wear the official Stanford gown, which I think is over-the-top bitchin' if you are going to do this sort of thing, but I can never bring myself to shell out the $800 or so to buy it for once-a-year use.  When these things were invented, they were functional:  to keep warm and to hide your  flask of applejack.  I'm thinking it would be pretty cool to teach in one of them.  My friend and colleague (the recently tenured) Jessica Silbey has a nice compromise.  She has a Ph.D. from Michigan in comparative literature, along with her law degree, and she ordered the very chic octagonal cap (she says to have one that fit), which gives an elegant beret look (of course, it may be uniquely Jessica who looks elegant in the cap; likely it's "dorky-trying-to-be-cool" on me). 

What DID occur to me around the 450th graduate to come across the stage was how cool it would be if the entire faculty sitting up there on the stage whipped out matching white MacBooks, flipped them open, and started surfing the net.  No, that's unduly churlish; in fact it's really a delight to catch the eye of a special student as he or she is walking across the stage.