Commencement | 2015
“We who are the benefactors and the beneficiaries of the best of times, in the best of places, owe it to everyone else to add our improved solutions to humanity’s jurisprudential DNA, so that there always will be, for ever more people, both a brighter tomorrow and a brighter today.” — MARTINE ROTHBLATT ’81, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, UNITED THERAPEUTICS CORPORATION
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COMMENCEMENT :: 2015 On May 15, 2015, more than 400 UCLA School of Law students joined the alumni community as they were awarded J.D. and LL.M. degrees at the school’s 64th annual commencement ceremony. It was a celebration not only of their achievement of this major milestone but also of the impact that is now possible in their future careers. The law school was honored to welcome entrepreneur and UCLA School of Law alumna Martine Rothblatt ’81, chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics Corporation, as this year’s commencement speaker. In her welcoming remarks, former Dean Rachel F. Moran shared her thoughts on the importance of the graduates’ chosen profession. She cited the roles historically played by lawyers in founding and strengthening the nation through public service, including during the Great Depression and the civil rights movement. She reflected on the public law school tradition of “training citizen-lawyers who can be agents of change and guardians of the good,” reminding the graduates of the transformative power of law in advancing common interests and strengthening the social compact. Martine Rothblatt then addressed the graduates, beginning her speech by talking about many of the things that have not changed since she graduated from UCLA Law—the beauty of the UCLA campus, the deep reservoir of love from the graduates’ families and friends and the ambition of the members of the graduating class. “It took a lot of effort to get to first, a place here at UCLA Law, and then to finish it, and then to go on to all the great things that you are planning. So this kind of ambition to be the best that you can be and
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to make the world a better place, that’s not changed at all,” Rothblatt said. She then spoke about some of the things that have changed, including new fields and features of the law, innovative technologies and impactful social changes like the legalization of same-sex marriage. Rothblatt shared examples from her life that have shaped her personal and professional development. She discussed her daughter’s life-threatening illness, which led her to found United Therapeutics Corporation, a biotech company that focuses on the development and commercialization of unique products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and lethal conditions—including the medicine necessary to treat her daughter’s condition. “We live in the greatest time there has ever been. And all of you graduating with these law degrees are among the luckiest human beings who have ever been alive,” she said. Rothblatt also talked about the responsibility that goes along with the privilege of being alive at “the best time in the history of humanity.” She encouraged the graduates to be curious, to question authority and to improve the law and pass on the improvements. Rothblatt said: “Stitch yourselves into the law, stitch your careers into the law, because as we improve the law we are evolving for the future. We who are the benefactors and the beneficiaries of the best of times, in the best of places, owe it to everyone else to add our improved solutions to humanity’s jurisprudential DNA, so that there always will be, for ever more people, both a brighter tomorrow and a brighter today.”