I ask my kids every semester when I teach ethics. I finish the semester by asking them to spend five minutes… — Neil Gorsuch
I ask my kids every semester when I teach ethics. I finish the semester by asking them to spend five minutes writing their obituary. They hate it. They think it is corny, and it might be a little corny. And then I ask them if they will volunteer to read some of them, and when they do, it always becomes clear people want to be remembered for the kindnesses they showed other people. And what I point out to them- what I try to point out- is that it is not how big your bank account balance is. Nobody ever puts that in their draft obituary, or that they billed the most hours, or that they won the most cases. It is how you treated other people along the way that matters. And for me, it is the words I read yesterday from Increase Sumner's tombstone [see page 321]. And that means as a person I would like to be remembered as a good dad, a good husband, kind and mild in private life, dignified and firm in public life. I have no illusions that I will be remembered for very long. If Byron White is nearly forgotten, as he is now and said he would be, I have no illusions that I will last five minutes. That is as it should be.
p. 322Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
But as a judge looking back, the most you can hope for is you have done fairness to each person who has come before you, decided each case on the facts and the law, and that you have just carried on the tradition of a neutral, impartial judiciary. That is what we do. We just resolve cases and controversies. Lawyers are supposed to be fierce advocates, and I was once a fierce advocate for my clients. But a judge is supposed to listen courteously and rule impartially.
p. 323
Courage remains as important in the legal profession today as it was then. Throughout our history lawyers who have made the greatest mark on this country haven't done so because they were smarter or were born into better families or held more important positions; it was because they were willing to stand firm for justice in the face of immense pressure and often at grave personal costs.
p. 182
Courage has been essential to the rule of law in this country from the beginning. The Declaration of Independence itself was, at heart, a complaint that the king had denied colonists the rule of law. As justification for their rebellion, colonists cited the fact that the king had withheld assent to duly enacted legislation, refused trial by jury, and prevented colonists from playing a significant role in their own governance. About half of the fifty-six colonists who signed the Declaration were lawyers. They quite literally put their lives on the line to secure a representative government and one of just laws: By signing the declaration, they became marked men who faced certain death if their cause failed.
p. 181
