By Joshua Kaplansky
Good morning, I’d like to thank Dean Sant’Ambrogio, our brilliant professors, and esteemed guests for being here. And I’d also like to thank my fellow classmates.
My name is Joshua Kaplansky, and I have the honor of being the class speaker today. I am here to talk about the Michigan State College of Law’s graduating class of 2026 and what it took for all of us to get to this point.
When we look out into this crowd, most will see just a group of law school graduates in nice robes wearing funny hats. But what I see is a group of the most intelligent, exceptional, and hardworking people I’ve had the privilege to know, individuals who will change the lives of thousands.
I see a judge who will rule on cases that define the law of our land. I see a lawyer who will prosecute high-profile criminals on behalf of the United States, and another who will defend the rights of the accused. And I even see a future senator who will take up the ideals of our founders in pursuit of a more perfect union.
However, ladies and gentlemen, this is not what you would have seen on the first day of law school.
My father once told me that the key to wisdom is realizing you know nothing at all. And it has occurred to me that my classmates and I were the wisest we will ever be on that first day of law school.
While we all came from different backgrounds and had different reasons for being there, we all saw the same thing on that first day. When we walked into that first class, we saw a few students who wanted to demonstrate their courage by sitting in the front of the classroom. Then there were those of us who found strength in numbers by sitting in the middle. While others emphasized their disdain for the exercise by sitting in the back. And most importantly, we saw one student raise their hand in a sheer act of bravery only to watch that same hand silently retreat with a sudden burst of self-preservation. The first day of law school was madness; in truth, it was frightening.
Many of us believed we knew nothing while everyone else knew everything.
Yet, slowly, as that first year went on, those who sat in the back slowly moved to the front. And the words on the pages of our textbooks began making a little more sense than they did the day before, and we were slowly becoming the fresh set of eyes that the law demands look upon it every year. Without even knowing it, we were getting smarter.
And while by the end of our first year of law school, we had not become lawyers, we did learn to rely on our minds to confront the problems in front of us. Where a soldier is trained to rely on their weapon in battle, we were trained to rely on our minds when confronted with our own silent battles.
And that’s all law school really is: Three years of silent battles. Everyone in this room knows what it’s like to spend hours alone in a dimly lit room, poring over the words of long-dead men. Everyone in this room knows what it feels like to have 4 months of your life boiled down to a three-hour exam and the pressure that comes with it.
Yet it is in these moments of great stress where we learned the most. Because it was in these moments that we learned what we were capable of. How hard we are willing to work. What sacrifices were we willing to make to achieve our goal and win the silent battles in front of us?
It is our ability to work hard and overcome these battles that will make the class of 2026 so successful. Trust me, I have had to argue with some of you guys, and we’re definitely a tough bunch. But as a Class, these last three years have shown us that we need to be tough. We need to be strong. Because it has become clear that we are not a generation of lawyers who have the privilege of going through the motions and trusting that the system will work itself out.
As we enter our careers, I believe we will come to learn that, while law school taught us a lot, it might have taught us one thing wrong. It taught us that some things were black letter law.Laws that were settled and unchangeable. But how can this be? Throughout law school, we’ve seen long-settled laws uprooted and changed. We’ve seen constitutional rights ingrained in our founding charter, but unable to protect those who need it most. We’ve come to learn that the pen and the sword no longer debate on who is mightier and instead have joined forces in furtherance of a common cause.
So, clearly, there is no black letter law. There is just the law. And what will define us as lawyers is what we choose to do with it. How we choose to mold and shape it.
Chief Justice Earl Warren once said, “Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile, I caught hell for.”
So, to my fellow classmates, I leave you with this. Never be afraid to advocate for the legal system you believe is fair and just. Never be afraid to use this privilege we have worked so hard to acquire to do some good and to help people, even if you catch hell for it. And if we advocate hard enough, maybe we will create new laws that a professor will someday call black letter.
To my mom, dad, sister, and girlfriend, thank you for supporting me. And to the family, friends, and loved ones of the Class of 2026, I speak for all of us when I say thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you. And even though law school is ending, we will still need your love and support throughout our careers.
So, I want to leave you with something as well.
Throughout our careers, do not judge us by our wins and our losses, but judge us by the battles we chose to fight. Do not judge us by the people or entities we defend, but judge us by the principles we seek to uphold. And do not judge us by the actions of those who hold power and instead judge us by how hard we’re willing to hit them.
So, congratulations to the Graduating Class of 2026. Go Green!