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In his address to graduates at Northwestern University School of Law's graduation convocation, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's second highest ranking Democrat, advises graduates to seek unlikely leaders who have made a difference:

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Thank you, Dean Van Zandt, President Beinen, faculty and staff, including my old friend Professor Dawn Clark Netsch, honored guests, friends and family members of today's graduates including Speaker and Mrs. Dennis Hastert and Congressman Mark Kirk and Kimberly Vertolli-Kirk. Most of all, thank you to the stars of this day – to David Lieber, a former member of my staff, and the entire Northwestern University School of Law, Class of 2005. Congratulations. You have all worked hard to get here and now must endure only one more lecture.

You know what they say about commencement speakers. They're like the corpse at an Irish wake. You're a necessary part of the ceremony, but you aren't expected to say much. You'll be pleased to know that I intend to follow that rule today.

Each of looks for a North Star to guide us along the uncertain paths of life – people close at hand and far away who can inspire us to live a more meaningful life.

A short distance from where we meet is a beautiful new park. Less than a year old, it is a tribute to a New Millennium. It captures the spirit of a city of hope and a city of dreams. Above one of the buildings in the park are the names of Joan and Irving Harris.

Irving Harris was a successful man by every measure. He spent the first 42 years of his life making a fortune and the next 52 years giving it away. He loved the arts and music and the world of politics. But more than these, he loved children. He said: "I had more money than I needed. So I decided I could either sit and observe it, or I could try to make a difference in a lot of kids' lives."

And what a difference he made. He helped create the Head Start program so that poor children could learn; the Ounce of Prevention Fund to prevent teen pregnancy, child abuse, and neglect; Zero to Three, a national center to promote the development of healthy babies and families, and so much more. When he died, his legacy was not measured in the size of his estate but in the lives touched and changed by his compassion.

George Ryan spent a different kind of capital—political capital—to right what he believed was a grievous wrong. His decision to challenge the death penalty in our state was an act of uncommon political courage.

A pharmacist from Kankakee , George Ryan was an unlikely leader in this cause. But he could not live with the burden of guilt on taking the life of an innocent man. He confronted the injustice of the death penalty and forced this state, our nation and others around the world to face this painful issue honestly.

A century earlier, another Illinois Governor, John Peter Altgeld, had sacrificed his political career when he freed the last of the Haymarket prisoners. The men had been convicted seven years earlier in a notorious trial riddled with abuse and judicial misconduct. Four men convicted with them had already been hanged and a fifth had committed suicide before Altgelt was elected. He knew, as he told his friend Clarence Darrow, that if he pardoned the three remaining Haymarket prisoners, "from that day, I will be a dead man politically." He was right. He was vilified in the press, and three and a half years later, defeated for re-election.

George Ryan knew that emptying death row would hurt him politically, too. But he did it anyway. Like Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who declared after 20 years of supporting the death penalty, "I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death," George Ryan dissented from the popular view. The Bluhm Clinic's Center on Wrongful Convictions did the extensive research, the endless investigations, and created the moral and political force that drove this historic debate and led George Ryan to his position. And by following his conscience, George Ryan – more than any other person in our time – changed the debate on the death penalty in America.

Irving Harris and George Ryan were both men of wealth and political power. But so many others of modest means have rocked our world.

Someone wrote that at the moment Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, "somewhere in the universe, a gear in the machinery shifted." Her courageous act of defiance showed America how to overcome the evil of segregation. In the end, Rosa Parks and her followers didn't just change the law. They changed America.

In 1942, Fred Korematsu was one of 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants who were declared "enemy aliens" by the United States government and deported to prison camps. He was 22 years old, a first-generation American, born and raised in northern California, who had done everything he could think of to be accepted as an American. He tried twice to enlist in the military after Pearl Harbor, but he was rejected for health reasons.

His family and friends complied with the internment order, but he resisted and challenged his arrest all the way to the United States Supreme Court. In 1944, in a decision that still lives in infamy, the Court ruled that the internments were justified by the need to combat sabotage and espionage.

It would take nearly 40 years for Fred Korematsu's conviction to be overturned by a U.S. District Court. In 1988, he helped win an apology and reparations from the United States government for internment camp survivors. In 1998, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Six weeks ago, Mr. Korematsu died. A year and a half before he died, he did something he never imagined he would have to do again. At the age of 83, in failing health, he filed another brief with the Supreme Court protesting what he believed to be unconstitutional detentions by our government – not in California this time, but at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His brief contained a simple plea: "to avoid the mistakes of the past, this court should make clear that the United States respects constitutional and human rights, even in times of war."

Natalia Dmytruk is a sign language interpreter for Ukraine 's state-run television. Last year, in the tense days following Ukraine 's presidential election, she went to Kiev's Independence Square several times. She saw the crowds protesting the stolen election and felt transformed by their courage. Afterwards, when she was called on to translate the official government version of events, she said it made her hands feel dirty.

Four days after the election, she staged her own silent protest. Under her long silk sleeve, she tied an orange ribbon to her wrist – a symbol of the "Orange Revolution." That day, as the newscaster read the official script, N atalia Dmytruk signed her own message: "Our President is Viktor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies, and I am very ashamed to translate such lies to you." She concluded with sign for the words, "Maybe I will see you again."

She expected to be fired—or worse. Instead, her co-workers congratulated her. Her act of courage emboldened others and the protests grew until finally, a new runoff election was ordered and Viktor Yushchenko was declared the winner.

The opposition in Ukraine had no access to state-run media, but Natalia Dmytruk did. At a critical moment in history, she was in a special position to help her nation.

These stories of caring and courage could be repeated many times over—people both famous and humble, using their positions in a special way.

You now have a special position in this society, at this critical moment in our history. You have been given skills and knowledge that others do not have, or you would not be here. You have studied with brilliant professors at one of the finest law schools in America.

With your law degree, you will be part of a profession that is positioned to do more than earn a living. You will be positioned to make a difference. As a practicing lawyer, setting high standards in the courtroom, in the boardroom, in the halls of government. Letting every person who comes to you as their counselor or advocate know of your honesty, your professionalism, and your commitment to the rule of law.

You can make a difference by applying your legal talents to public service. You can be a school board member, a state legislator, a Congressman or a Governor. You can be a Senator or – if you're really smart – Speaker of the House.

You can make a difference as a law professor, educating and inspiring a new generation of Americans committed to justice. One need look no further than Northwestern to see how much a good lawyer who loves teaching can accomplish.

Many of you learned about the rewards and challenges of public service through "externships" with prosecutors, public defenders and legal services organizations.

Some of you worked with the Bluhm Clinic's Center on Wrongful Convictions, advancing the widely recognized work that helped persuade Governor Ryan to make his courageous decision.

Some of you worked with the clinic's Children and Family Justice Center on its strategy to abolish the death penalty for juveniles. You tracked down 17 Nobel Peace laureates, including Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa and the Dalai Lama, and you persuaded them all to sign an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the case of Roper v. Simmons. And 10 weeks ago, you won your case before the highest court of our land.

Some of you worked with the Center for International Human Rights, filing briefs with the Supreme Court on the same moral and legal challenge that troubled Fred Korematsu: the detention of detainees at Guantamamo and elsewhere.

Some of you worked on an asylum case involving a young woman from Cameroon who would have faced torture had she returned home. When she came to you, she was facing deportation. Last week, you won her case.

Some of you traveled to Malawi this year and worked with delegates from 26 African nations to draft a Declaration of Legal Aid in the Criminal Justice System in Africa, which was adopted by the Malawi government and is now being considered by the U.N.

Many of you have already made history. Go now and take what you have learned here to a world always searching for leadership and inspiration. If you do, you will make more than a living. You will make a profound difference.

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