M Is for Martha, Coakley

Yesterday’s winner with an alphabet of advice on God, the devil, and the law

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In the video above, Martha Coakley (LAW’79) invokes A Man for All Seasons in her advice to 2007 LAW grads and offers a sense of her legal values.

Three years ago, Martha Coakley was elected the first woman attorney general of Massachusetts. Now the School of Law alum is on track to become the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the Bay State. Yesterday, she won the special primary election to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the late Edward M. Kennedy (Hon.’70), clearing the highest obstacle between Boston and Washington in this heavily Democratic state. Coakley (LAW’79), who took 47 percent of the vote in the four-way Democratic contest, will face Republican state senator Scott Brown in a general election in January.

For clues about how she might take care of business should she succeed in taking on a new job come January, BU Today reviewed Coakley’s 2007 convocation address at the School of Law. Coakley offered the law school grads advice in what she called “somewhat random but not wholly unconnected ABCs, in the style of Poor Richard’s Almanack,” running through the alphabet, matching each letter with a bit of wisdom.

Our favorite lesson is attached to the letter M, take from A Man for All Seasons — Coakley quotes several lines from the famous play about Sir Thomas More, illuminating her thoughts about the complicated relationship between good, evil, and the law.

The entire alphabet’s worth of advice is available here.

Art Jahnke can be reached at jahnke@bu.edu.

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M Is for Martha, Coakley

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  • Art Jahnke

    Senior Contributing Editor

    Art Janke

    Art Jahnke began his career at the Real Paper, a Boston area alternative weekly. He has worked as a writer and editor at Boston Magazine, web editorial director at CXO Media, and executive editor in Marketing & Communications at Boston University, where his work was honored with many awards. Profile

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There are 4 comments on M Is for Martha, Coakley

  1. This woman’s record shows she has no respect for the second amendment. With the overwhelming majority of states attorneys general recently submitting an amicus brief in support of incorporation of the second amendment she failed to do so demonstrating what she thinks of the bill of rights. If she were on the supreme court she would want to selectively incorporate the bill of rights based on her personal bias. While you might want to vote for her because her personal bias is more closely aligned with your own doing would would subject other Americans to her dictatorial whims…….could you really live with that?

    I would not vote for another woman just because she is a woman and a BU alumna. Unless she respects the constitution in my book she is just another shill that will take America further down the wrong path.

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  4. She only won because no one in this stated cared to even take time to vote. Hopefully she will not win in January or this state could face another 25 years liberal non sense.

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