StC News
Camp Speaker Series welcomes U.S. District Court Judge Hannah Lauck
Manners matter in U.S. District Court. Federal court mandates that jackets be buttoned and that no one speak or move around the room without the judge’s permission. Pointing and talking over each other are strictly taboo.
These are just a few of the ageless rules of civility Judge Hannah Lauck addressed in a recent chapel talk that was part of the StC Camp Speaker Series started last year to encourage civil discourse. While drawing inspiration from George Washington, To Kill a Mockingbird’s Atticus Finch and Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius, she minced no words in warning students and urging them to “behave well and do right.”
Such decorum seems far removed from current culture, often defined by playground taunts, reality TV values and vulgar body references.
But in Judge Lauck’s courtroom in the Eastern District of Virginia, dubbed the “rocket docket” for its speed in adjudicating cases, national issues such as the constitutionality of statutes, international terrorism and disputes between states are debated with civility and respect.
The judge addressed problems inherent in online communication where the written tone is deaf to sarcasm, silliness, gravity or pain, she said, adding that the haste of such communication encourages mistakes. In addition, anonymity, sometimes the preferred mode of expression, is deemed inherently unfair in court.
She closed with words of inspiration for students choosing their calling. The Wellesley College and Yale University Law School graduate said that early jobs taught her she couldn’t work anywhere except a place where her conscience did not have to abide by the majority rule, as Atticus Finch described it, or the venerated notion from Marcus Aurelius who admonished others 2,000 years ago: “Never esteem anything as an advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.”
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Judge Lauck opened with “hello friends,” echoing a habit of Paul Camp, a now deceased Richmond businessman with long-standing ties to the school in whose honor the Camp Speaker Series was started. His wife Lee was a long-time Upper School history teacher and son Doug graduated from St. Christopher’s in 1987. “I always admired the consistency of such a small act of grace,” Judge Lauck said of his greeting. “Paul Camp welcomed nearly everyone he saw with the same open heart… and that may be all I need to talk to you about civility today.”
Judge Lauck spent the day at St. Christopher’s visiting classes and meeting with students in small groups.
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