PORTLAND (AP) – Former Senate leader George Mitchell told law school graduates Saturday that the nation was great before it became an economic and military power because of the nation’s founding principles of equal justice under the law.

“What you do in the practice of law,” Mitchell, himself a lawyer, told 85 University of Maine Law School graduates, “will be important.”

The commencement was one of several around the state over the holiday weekend. Also on Saturday, more than 400 students received degrees at Bowdoin College. Today, Bates and Colby colleges are holding their commencements.

In Brunswick, Anthony DiNicola of Malden, Mass., and Haley Bridger of Hamilton, Mass., delivered the commencement address at Bowdoin in keeping with a tradition of letting students select one or more of their own to speak.

Past speakers included poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1825, House Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed in 1860 and Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary in 1877.

Mitchell, a Bowdoin graduate, was 25 miles to the south at Portland’s Merrill Auditorium for the University of Maine Law School graduation.

He reminded graduates that what makes the United States special is its founding principles, regardless of the nation’s status as a superpower.

“You must never forget that the United States was a great nation long before it was a great economic and military power,” Mitchell said.

Copy the Story Link