nonwhite, poor, most of whom aren't working, i voted against them. i don't think that's a vote many people want to make. "newsmakers" tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern, here on c-span. >> people don't want to think of roosevelt's conservation as a policy as much as a passion. he put almost 240 million acres of wild america. now as people are talking about the environmentalism and green movements, roosevelt is becoming the key figure to understand, because he was the only politician of his day who understood biology and birds's and deer and elk and actually did something. >> sunday on "q ann a" sunday

night at 8:00 on c-span or listen on xm satellite radio. . >> this is c-span's "america and the courts." next, commencement addresses by anthony kennedy, elana kagan, and leah ward sears. this is at stanford university last sunday. [applause] >> thank you.

thank you very much. president, my fellow students, citizens of the world that my seat to come ever closer to the idea and reality of a rule of law, and especially graduates in the graduating class of 2009. thank you very much for inviting me to participate in your commencement. i suppose there are a number of witnesses where i have become a willing accomplice. each of you has your own story, a unique story of your years at stanford. that story is bound up with your pants, your family is, at your loved ones who have sustained you hear.

you have already thanked them on a platform, and the entire nation thanks them, again, for sending you here to one of the great universities. thank you very much. [applause] your story has already been bound up with the idea of freedom, and freedom must always be a part of your story as you shape your careers and plan your destiny. from the beginning of the republic, we have understood that freedom is defined by a moral principle. and that principle is that with our freedom comes the duty to share it with others.

it is the birthright of all humankind. you cannot have two people living in the same community, or 2 million or 2 billion, all having freedom without rules. those rules translate into law. no big surprise, this is middle school civics stuff. but those principles are sufficiently important that i bought to discuss them -- want to discuss importing few minutes today. it is urgent that we do so for this reason. on this earth, of humankind, up more than half the people in the world live outside wall -- the law.

more than half have not the will or capacity to seek freedom which makes double lot just, and this must change. it is urgent for you to make the case for freedom. it is urgent for you to make the case for law. it is certain for this reason. our last, best security is in the realm of ideas. and on this point, the necessity for freedom and rule overall, the world cannot be in search of two different destinies. but the jury is out in over half of the world. some of whom are hostile, some of whom feel simply powerless.

when lawyers make a case to a jury, they have about two hours. today, i have about 15 minutes to make a case. in china, i have tried to visit law schools for over two decades now. and but i teach students, some of them have their arms across their chest in the universal sign of resistance to the message or the messenger. and yet, there are many wonderful students who are willing to consider, to assure you out when you make the case for freedom. this last september, we just opened a gradual loss school, the first of its kind on the

american model, which is to say three years of law school after you have an undergraduate degree. everything in china is numbers. if you forget the billion, 300 million makes him the second biggest country in the world. this law school at about 150 places, and even the president of stanford would have been astounded at the differential between the number of applications and places. thousands of highly qualified people. the humanities, the arts, engineering, the sciences. so they trimmed the list down and finally had about and decided they would have interviews.

they said, what inspired you to go to law school? they could not see my aunt was a lawyer, my brother went to law school. almost everyone of them said they were inspired by a movie. the chinese are movie buffs, and they love movies made in england and the united states. how i thought of "12 angry men." wrong answer. the answer is, "legally blonde." [laughter] i had not seen it. we rented it. after i saw the movie, i understood the point. the movie is about a character of a girl who is frivolous and i

leave -- naive, and she chooses to go to a law school a continent away which is formal for her, hostile, threatening. what you must do with your careers, relating to the idea and concept of freedom that is so central to the american understanding of the self, you must take a risk, because you will enter into a realm of ideas or a place in space where there are hostilities to your ideas. and you must make the case. and when you do so, you must know the consequences of your absence of freedom, of the

absence of law, and you must know that entry lanka -- in sri lanka, over a thousand people a year go to jail for want of a $1 fine each year. there are countries in africa where a woman is raped and must pay $5 to file a complaint with police before they investigate. you must know that each year, over 800,000 people, people with a link with you because they are human, are captured and sold into slavery or for sexual exploitation. all of this is because of a lack of freedom. it is surprising how commentators sometimes resist this. in the late-70's, an author who

spent time in the gulag and who wrote novels reaffirming the strength and resemblance -- resilience of the human spirit gave a commencement speech. i was living in california and interested in writing. no internet those days. i had to wait a couple of days for the "new york times's." he excoriated the west and criticized the west for its own law. his message was that any society that defines the tissues of existence in legalistic terms is condemned to spiritual mediocrity. i could not understand it. and that is a reflection that i realized for him, laws are defined differently. from his heritage and experience, law was closed, a

threat, a decree. that is not when we see wall -- law -- that is not the way that we see law. it is not an idea to be avoided. it is a thing to be embraced. for us, the law is not a command. as us in making progress. it is not a threat. it is a promise. but this is so misunderstood. there is so little of lamentation throughout the world -- so little implementation that this idea is in danger of falling through the wayside. on a commission established by the u.n., the commission for empowerment of the poor, we

asked the staff simple questions. one was, how long does it take to get a business license to open up a bakery in a struggling country of millions. the answer was, if you wanted to be an entrepreneur and to open a bakery, to get a business license to keep 500 -- took you 500 days, and the cost was 3.5 months labor force skilled worker. you know the option. you pay a bribe, support a corrupt system with people subsisting off of corruption, the antithesis of law. and this is dangerous. one of the reasons we want you to succeed economically is so you can plan your own destiny, so you can plan your own life, in a world where governments are always waiting, all too eager to plan the destiny for you. this must be understood.

the absence of a civil laws structure means there is the absence of the structures that protect health and human lives, our water system. millions of you have seen pictures. some of you, perhaps, have been to africa and seen pictures of this stately, elegant african women in a flowing, colorful robe with a jug of water on her head. that job weighs more than delighted to allowance at the airport. -- weighs more than the luggage allowance at the airport. the board and some hours, the woman's hours, the heartbreaking hours it takes to bring water to the family in the sub-saharan are staggering by cautious are staggering by cautious estimates.

>> over 16 billion human hummers -- human hours. 16 billion, with a b and our engineers know how to build systems. there is a water shortage. that is all the more reason to build an intelligent system. you have read comments that will tell you that your generation, your graduating class is, your youera shapes our country's poly and shapes our nation's course

that other generations before you. i do not believe that this is true. you have an awareness and understanding and appreciation of what president hennessy in his opening remarks called the interconnectedness of the world, of the universe. and this is not just in an earth sciences era, although they are on the verge of discovering, either in quantum physics or astrophysics or in cooperation, the nature of matter, including dark matter, which will give us a new understanding of where we are in the universe. but this interconnectedness, in the arts, in literature, in writing, business, economics -- this interconnectedness is

manifest in communications, revolutions, and in law school have a world away. it will give you empowerment to work with others in your own careers and in your own lives, conscious always of the value of what and the freedoms as we understand them, and that makes me return to the beginning, the american idea of freedom. when we rebelled against the english, people were puzzled. they said the americans want freedom. what are they talking about? they are the freest in the world. they pay taxes when they want, not when they did not. they know what they need.

what are they talking about? we had a position. was called the dust to ration of independence -- it was called the declaration of independence. we find ourselves, created ourself image. we established our identification in the idea of freedom with this moral principle. please remember that the competition guarded by lawyers and judges does not just belong to a bunch of lawyers and judges. is yours. you must know it. you must understand it. americans know that freedom is correct, but we also have an inward sense that this is true.

but you have competition. the president takes the oath of office to preserve and defend constitution. you have the same duty. please remember that you cannot preserve what you cannot revere, it cannot protect what you have not learned, you cannot defend what you do not know. and you do know these things. you know we are empowered by this small principal, and if there is something of a paradox, law and freedom are priceless. yet they become more valuable when we are able to share them. this is the meaning of the united states. this is the meaning of the freedom that brought you here

and the freedom-of fall you when you leave. your empowerment, to make this principle known and establish an effective presence in the lives of people is all the greater because of your talents and your degrees that you have obtained here at stanford. generations will give thanks 5 for the contribution you make to our society, but they will give paternal thanks -- eternal thanks if you resolve to protect and preserve and defend freedom and to give it to others. you have made many resolutions

r which we think of. here at stanford, here in this stadium, here today, the date of your commencement. thank you. [applause] >> next, u.s. solicitor general elana kagan spoke in cambridge, mass., on june 3. she was the dean of harvard law school until earlier this year when she was confirmed the

solicitor general. [applause] >> such a pleasure to be here. there's all this clutter around, so i'm going to clear it. ok. congratulations, everyone. it is a special join with me that i can come back and share with you again. i feel closely attached to this group. i said a few years ago, they as students and i esteem, we had begun together, and for a similar reason i feel very close

and moved by this class because we are finishing together. u.s. students, and again, me as dean. so i will always think of you as my fellow graduates . i have a fabulous job right now. it is a tremendous job. so if i could just echo how important it is to love your job, it is really important to love your job, and i love my job. i have a three-part test. for whether a job is worth doing.

everything has to come in three parts of your law professor, right? here's my test. the first is that the job challenges you intellectually. does it make you stretch your mind? does it make you think hard every-day? that is my first part. the second question that i asked myself as, do i feel as if i am contributing something? do i feel as if i am making a difference to someone outside myself, making a difference in the world? and the third thing i asked myself, and this is echoing elizabeth, is can i just not

wait to get to work in the morning? all of these standards, a current job passes. i was so happy when i got and a plane to come back to harvard law school and participate in this event. not a day goes by that i do not miss the school. i miss the dynamism and energy, the passion for ideas that one finds here, and the commitment to equal truly making a difference in the world. these things do not emanate from the buildings .

that emanate from this outstanding group, and it is state of faculty and staff. warren and cosgrove are such superlative representatives. but most of all, i missed the students. i used to say, some time something goes wrong and you get into a funk, but i realized that

there was a short foolproof way that the job had of getting me out of a funk. and the way was to leave my office behind, shut the door, and go someplace where there a lot of students. it is the students that make this place great. it is the students to provide it with its dynamism and energy, and they demonstrate every day the passion for ideas. when they walk, i hope and pray when they walk out its graduates they are so committed to making a difference in the world. it is an incredible statistic. and it is maybe-measure i can give, although not the only measure, of how special the students of harvard law school

are, and i miss you. [applause] i know that some of you may have thought sometime in this last year or so that you and this class drew the short straw. i do not think there's been a class for many many years that has had the difficulties that this class has had in terms of jobs, financial security, all of these things. of course, you are still much more low-key than most people in the world, and the difficulties you have had do not compare with most of the difficulties people are having. yet in comparison with some who have come before you, you have

had a harder time of it. you face somewhat more constricted choices. but here's the thing. it is a cliche, but the thing about cliches is that they become cliches because they are true. i think this is true, that the greatest challenges produced the greatest challenges produced the biggest opportunities . here are two ways that i think that might be true for your class. the first is that this society today is an inflection point in so many ways. there are so many things changing. our economy, our politics, and that means that you can make a