Introduction of Senator Cory Booker at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Lecture

By Muhammad U. Faridi, President, New York City Bar Association

Good evening.  My name is Muhammad Faridi, and I am the President of the New York City Bar Association.

Two years ago, the last time this lecture was given, my job was easy.  It was just to welcome everyone to the Association.  Judge Rakoff was our lecturer, and Judge Lohier had the difficult task of introducing him.

This year, I have been given both jobs—first, to welcome you, and second, the more difficult task of introducing Senator Booker. So this may run a little longer than last year. Luckily for everyone, I do not have Senator Booker’s filibuster endurance, so I will be relatively short.

Let me begin by welcoming you all to the Association’s Great Hall.  We are grateful to have so many leaders of the bench, the bar, and the profession with us tonight.  Your presence matters to the continuing life of this lecture.  And it matters because the title of Senator Booker’s lecture—“The Lawyer’s Obligation When Democracy Is Under Stress”—is no longer a theoretical question for lawyers today.

Every lawyer in this room has confronted some version of it in recent years—in courtrooms, in boardrooms, in government service, in universities, in law firms, and in public debate.  What are our obligations when courts are attacked for unpopular decisions?  When lawful advocacy is treated as disloyalty?  When legal process is used as a weapon?  When facts become optional?  When public officials test the limits of institutional restraint?  What does the profession owe not only to clients, but also to the legal system that makes ordered liberty possible?

Those questions go directly to the purpose of the Cardozo lecture.

The lecture was established in 1941 to honor—I’ll quote from the report of the committee that established the lecture—Justice Cardozo’s “love for the law, passion for justice and sympathy for humanity.”  That beautiful phrase captures the subject that has animated these lectures for more than eight decades: the moral commitments of law, and the obligations those commitments impose on lawyers and judges.

I think it is important tonight to give you a flavor of the earlier lectures because Senator Booker’s title is a return to the central questions asked by each lecturer.  We are fortunate that so many of the prior lectures have been published, and I would encourage you to peruse them.  They ask, again and again, what does the law require when formal legal rights are not enough, when access to courts is unequal, when courts are attacked, when vulnerable people need lawyers, and when the profession must decide whether it will be a bystander or a guardian of constitutional democracy.

Chief Justice Earl Warren’s 1970 lecture was titled “All Men Are Created Equal.”  I have a feeling that if he gave that lecture tonight, he would replace “men” with “persons.”  He ended that lecture with a sentence that still speaks to the profession: “It is not enough merely to open the courthouse doors to everyone.”  The proceedings, he said, “must . . . be open on equal terms to all who enter; otherwise the word ‘justice’ is a sterile one which cannot command the respect we claim for it.”[1]

The title of the lecture that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave here in 1999 was “Affirmative Action: An International Human Rights Dialogue.”  She reminded us that equality is not only an American constitutional value, but part of a broader human-rights tradition.  And she warned: “[W]e are the losers if we neglect what others can tell us about endeavors to eradicate bias against women, minorities and other disadvantaged groups.”[2]

When Anthony Lewis gave his lecture here in 2000, he titled it: “Why the Courts?”  He warned that there were forces in this country that were “impatient with the constraints of law.”  And then he gave the profession its assignment: “Lawyers are going to have to lead the fight.”  He added that “the integrity of the courts should be the prime rallying cry of the organized bar everywhere.”[3]

Judge Jack B. Weinstein’s 2007 lecture was titled “The Role of Judges in a Government of, for, and by the People.”  I had the privilege of listening to it as a junior lawyer when I sat here as his law clerk.  Judge Weinstein invoked a phrase used by Lincoln in his Gettysburg address—a government “of, for, and by the people”—to implore the profession to pursue “justice under the law for all.”  He said that following Lincoln requires “an expansive view of the meaning of ‘people,’” reducing restrictions on access to courts, clearing barriers to participation in government, and helping the disadvantaged.  And he asked a question that applies not only to judges, but to lawyers as well: “Does my decision unnecessarily widen the gap between rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged?”[4]

Those lectures ask the question that brings us here tonight: what does the profession owe to constitutional democracy?  The Model Rules capture the point.  Lawyers have a “special responsibility for the quality of justice.”[5]  Lawyers also have a “duty to uphold legal process.”[6]  Those words matter most when institutions are under strain.

That brings me to Senator Cory Booker.

Some parts of Senator Booker’s biography are well known.  He grew up in New Jersey.  He went to Stanford, Oxford, and Yale Law School.  After law school, he moved to Newark and started a nonprofit organization that provided legal services for low-income families, including tenants challenging slumlords.[7]

He was elected to the Newark City Council at 29.  He served as Newark’s mayor from 2006 to 2013.  Since 2013, he has represented New Jersey in the United States Senate.  He serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, among others.  He has been a leading voice on criminal justice reform, including the First Step Act.[8]  And in April 2025, he held the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes, the longest individual floor speech in Senate history.[9]

But there is another part of Senator Booker’s record that speaks especially directly to tonight’s lecture and that has particularly resonated with me.  I recall a time a few years ago when Senator Booker defended a Muslim judicial nominee who had been attacked not for his legal reasoning, not for his writings, and not for anything he had said, but for having done what lawyers are supposed to do.  The judicial nominee in question had represented the family of a man with mental disabilities who had died in prison.  Senator Booker read from a letter by Pastor Julia Ramsay-Nobles—the deceased client’s sister—stating that the judicial nominee (whom Senator Booker spoke about) spent years “holding the powerful to account” and that the case formed “a close bond” between them.[10]

Then came the sentence that belongs in this lecture: “A Christian pastor, a Muslim lawyer, working together for American justice.”[11]

Senator Booker understood what was at stake.  The attack was not only on one nominee.  It was an attack on the idea that lawyers must be free to represent vulnerable people without being smeared for the representation itself.  He called it “character assassination.”  He called it “guilt by association.”  And he said it was an attack on a person who “stood up for the powerless.”[12]

That episode goes to the heart of tonight’s subject.  The lawyer’s obligation when democracy is under stress must include the obligation to stand with the vulnerable, the unpopular, and the accused without being fearful of being punished for the representation itself.  And sometimes, when the lawyer is criticized for doing that type of work, the price that the lawyer pays is not a mark of shame, but a badge of honor.

Senator Booker comes to us tonight as a lawyer who began his public life representing vulnerable families; as a mayor who governed a complex city; as a senator who works within a polarized constitutional system; and as a public servant who has stood on the Senate floor to defend lawyers for doing what lawyers are supposed to do: represent the vulnerable, hold power to account, and insist that public judgment be based on truth rather than fear.

The Cardozo tradition asks what law demands of those privileged to practice it?  The answer running through these lectures is service, courage, restraint, truth, access to justice, and defense of constitutional principles.

Please join me in welcoming the Honorable Cory Booker, United States Senator for New Jersey.