ADDRESS AT THE CONSTITUTION DAY CONVOCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF LAW The Honorable J. Michael Luttig * ________ Thank you, Dean Hubbard, for that kind introduction, and thank you, students, and law students of the University of South Carolina. I had the privilege to serve for over fifteen years on the Federal Bench with some of your law school’s most distinguished graduates—including my dear friends, The Honorable Donald Russell, Robert Chapman, William Wilkins, William Traxler, Dennis Shedd, and of course, Karen Williams, in honor of whom this beautiful courtroom is fittingly named.. I was honored almost six years ago to give the commencement address at this great law school, as it marked and celebrated its 150th year anniversary. And I am honored beyond words to have been asked to be your 2022 Constitution Day speaker today. Thank you so very much, all of you! ******************** “We the People [in 1787] . . . ordain[ed] and establish[ed]” our Constitution “in Order to form a more perfect Union.” It was not until 2004, over two centuries after the signing of the United States Constitution on September 17 of that year, that Congress legislated Constitution Day. If the First Congress of the United States had legislated Constitution Day in 1789, this Constitution Day 2022 still could well be the most consequential Constitution Day ever celebrated in all of American history. On this Constitution Day, our country; our institutions of government and governance; the institutions of our democracy; and our institutions of law and law enforcement, are under vicious, unsustainable, and unendurable attack from within our own country. Speaking in a time of not dissimilar tumult in America nearly two centuries ago, Abraham Lincoln urged a revival to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, a renewed reverence for that Great Charter for our governance and guarantor of our liberty and our freedoms. * This Article is a minimally edited transcript of The Honorable J. Michael Luttig’s Address given on September 15, 2022 at the University of South Carolina School of Law’s Constitution Day Convocation. Judge Luttig served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit 1991–2006.
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