By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
May 21, 2025
Speaking to the newest class of law school graduates, Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush reminded the individuals clad in caps and gowns of the frustration they felt as children when something was lost or taken that caused them to claim, “Hey! That’s not fair.” Then she told them that with their new law degrees, they had the power and the responsibility to reshape the world into a more just place.
“Justice is not abstract,” Rush told the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law graduates. “Justice is deeply singular, deeply personal. So will you accept the status quo or will you dare to imagine, to create, to nourish, to insist on a world that is fairer than what you inherited?”
The chief justice was the keynote speaker at IU McKinney’s Class of 2025 Graduation Recognition Ceremony on Sunday at the Everwise Amphitheater at White River State Park in downtown Indianapolis. On a beautiful May day with a bright sun, blue sky and cooling breeze, the law school celebrated the 246 scholars who had successfully completed their legal training to earn a doctor of jurisprudence, doctor of judicial science, master of jurisprudence or master of laws degree, while family and friends cheered loudly.
This class of lawyers started law school when the country was still emerging from the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic, and they are entering a society where truth and the mores of democracy are being questioned daily. They are becoming attorneys when rights such as due process and birthright citizenship are being challenged and while the fears of a constitutional crisis are rising as the Trump administration seems unwilling to follow the rule of law or the rulings from the courts.
The four graduates who gave remarks at the ceremony on behalf of the Class of 2025 noted the uncertainty of the times and encouraged their classmates to aim for higher ideals.
Syed Arafat Ahmed, a graduate of the master of laws division, said diversity is not a challenge, but a strength, and that justice is not only a “courtroom word,” but a way of life. Caitlyn Fields and Shelia Antley Counts, graduates of the doctor of jurisprudence program, full-time and part-time division, respectively, told their schoolmates to be kind and decent and share light, rather than throw shade. Fields said showing empathy was not a weakness but a way to create hope and unity while Counts sang a few verses from a hymn and then said service is the rent that has to be paid for living on Earth. LaCretia Allen, a graduate of the master of jurisprudence division, passed along a bit of wisdom from her mother: “The cavalry ain’t coming. You it.”
Rush said in the weeks prior to the ceremony, she met with some of the members of the Class of 2025, who provided a “dose of honest despair about the future.” They told her stories and shared their hopes as well as their anxieties. Through those conversations, some themes emerged about doing meaningful work and building a supportive community of colleagues, but several just wanted to know, “Is everything going to be OK?”
Advising the graduates to be hopeful, Rush told them to look inward and ask how they can be more just in their own lives to both their loved ones and to the strangers they pass on the street. Also, she said justice alone is not enough. It must be administered with love and empathy, or it will look a lot like revenge.
“We must find ways to love our neighbors, forgive those who err, identify common ground with those you disagree with,” Rush said. “As lawyers, society is depending on you to lead the way to reformative justice, not retribution.”
Prior to being appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court in 2012 by former Gov. Mitch Daniels and becoming the state’s first female chief justice in 2014, Rush was a trial court judge. She was elected to three terms in Tippecanoe Superior Court, adjudicating cases of distressed families and vulnerable children.
As a judge, Rush said, she has spent many hours thinking about justice and how to be just. Her fire for justice was lit at Richmond High School in the 1970s by her desire for a letterman’s jacket. She was a student athlete and wanted the varsity coat that came with athletic prowess, but females were denied such cool trappings. So she fought for equality and finally got the school to buy windbreakers for the young women.
Rush reminded the graduates that things in life are not fair and some people experience more unfairness than others. Access to health care, education, the courts, and the living and working conditions all vary, depending on where people live, how they live and even with whom they live.
“The injustices that stir our souls the loudest, are the ones we are uniquely qualified, and called, to address,” Rush said. She told the graduates to start working for justice by fighting the injustices that break their own hearts.
“Those days of just saying, ‘Hey, it’s not fair,’ are over now,” Rush told the graduates. “With that law degree, you get to act.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
