County Supervisor Roger Dickinson
Speaks at Law Library Dedication

[Editor Note: For those of you who missed the Law Library Dedication and Law Day Celebration, on May 2, we are reprinting the text of Roger Dickinson's speech. We hope that you enjoy it as much as we did.]

I am honored to join you today to share this very important occasion. At the outset, let me add my congratulations to those who have been recognized for their outstanding contributions to our community and the law.

Keynote speaker Roger Dickinson and master of ceremonies Judge Ransom.

Listening to the many accomplishments of those rightly singled out today makes me contemplate my own efforts as a lawyer. To characterize those efforts, perhaps it is sufficient to note that my Martindale-Hubbell rating has actually improved since I stopped actively practicing law about eight years ago, so that now I have attained the top rating possible. I figure that within just a few short years, if I continue to not practice law, I'll be a candidate for the highest ranking among the country's best lawyers.

It is my special privilege to be afforded the opportunity to speak to you about this library. You see, as a young child, I was frequently to be found in the public library and as a teenager, I served as a school librarian. While I must confess that the campus library held considerably less attraction for me as a college student, during law school, I, like many of you, I suspect, became planted like a fixture in the library.

Emmy Guntermann, Lilly Spitz, Charity Kenyon, Roger Dickinson and Glenn Ehlers.

When I began practicing law, the county law library took on special importance. While it was close to my office and the staff was always quite helpful, having it buried in the basement of the courthouse, and open only when the rest of the building was as well, made for some considerable frustration-especially since my work often involved federal and other state cases that weren't otherwise readily available. I came to harbor a secret desire for a bigger, better, more accessible law library - but there didn't seem to be much I could do about it.

As a member of the Board of Supervisors, however, I acquired an operating platform. I discovered that I wasn't the only one who thought getting out of the basement was a noble and worthy pursuit. With the leadership of Shirley David, the law library board of trustees, and the assistance of the county staff (and a little encouragement from me), we find ourselves here today dedicating a beautiful county law library which is nearly 20,000 square feet, more than twice the size of the old library, containing nearly 50,000 volumes and numerous other resources and facilities. Even more fitting, this terrific new library has found its home in an historic building, which captures Sacramento's unique past. The climb has taken us from the basement to the penthouse, at least figuratively, if not literally. Perhaps there is even poetic justice in bringing a law library to a building that was once a jail and then a police station.

Today's dedication of this beautiful new-and old-law library carries significance far beyond its own walls, however. It is a dedication delayed appropriately until now from last fall in the aftermath of despicable terrorist attacks on our country. But it is precisely those attacks and similar threats to our free society that reinforce why today's ceremony holds such importance.

As Andrew Carnegie observed "there is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the free public library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."

Law Library's New Home - Historic Hall of Justice Building.

An integral element of our democracy, our republic, our free society, is the theorem that we are a nation of laws, and that each person is entitled to equal justice under the law. But the theorem holds little value if the resources necessary to realize it are not available to all. The free public law library not only symbolizes our commitment to the precept of equal justice, it houses the means and tools to ensure it.

Gideon's trumpet by Anthony Lewis, the story of Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the constitutional right to counsel in criminal cases, inspired me-and perhaps some of you-to want to become a lawyer. The story of an indigent and itinerant man, Clarence Earl Gideon, who took his pro per request for a lawyer to the U.S. Supreme Court, reminds us that every citizen of our country deserves a full measure of justice. It requires no imagination, as you gaze across the breadth of this law library, to see that from the least educated to the most sophisticated, each person at work is pursuing that full measure to which they are entitled.

We live in times which call upon us not just to rally around our flag, but to reflect on why our flag is worth rallying around. We rise to the defense of our nation not simply because it is the homeland of our birth or our adoption, but because we are committed to the principles of equal treatment, equal opportunity, and equal justice enunciated by our forebears.

While we make no claim that we have achieved perfection, our institutions have been nurtured over 225 years to incorporate the values we hold most high. In these times, which test our resolve to maintain our devotion to those values, this dedication ceremony serves to reaffirm our uncompromised commitment.

The unveiling of the plaque.

Thomas Jefferson told us at the dawn of our nation that "a democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry." What better defines that principle than the public law library, where citizens can become informed and educated about the rights and responsibilities crucial to the conduct of a democratic society with an open and accessible system of justice for all.

In 1774, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, "we live, my dear soul, in an age of trial. What will be the consequence, I know not." While surely none of us here today can know with certainty the consequence of the age of trial in which we now live, we can be confident that as long as the free public law library remains a place we venerate, the light of freedom and justice shall not diminish from our land.

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