The FBA: Connected for Good

President’s Message from the Spring 2024 issue of The Federal Lawyer

One of my college professors taught me something years ago that I have never forgotten. He used lumber to illustrate why it is important to work together. He said that two 2x4s together can hold four times the weight of a single 2×4. I was thinking about that example a couple of years ago and decided to research whether it was really true. I learned that one 2×4 can hold 636 pounds, two 2x4s working together can hold 2,911 pounds, and three 2x4s working together can hold 8,890 pounds. My professor was right! Of course, his lesson really wasn’t about lumber, it was about the strength and importance of our connections with other people.

The Federal Bar Association exists to give us an opportunity to connect. There is indeed a strength and an importance to our FBA connections, because we are “connected for good.” Let me explain what that phrase means to me.

We are connected for good to do good.

For more than 100 years, the FBA has been promoting the welfare, interests, education, and professional development of federal judges and practitioners. This noble, non-partisan mission requires a collective effort to achieve. An African proverb says it another way: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Throughout the country, FBA members are working together every day to do good. Here are just a few examples. On March 21, more than 100 FBA members gathered on Capitol Hill to hold dozens of meetings with their Representatives and Senators to advocate for funding for the judicial branch, for enhanced judicial security, for more federal judgeships in areas that desperately need them, and for the formation of an Article 1 immigration court. Throughout the year, our FBA chapters across the country will hold an annual Civics Day to educate youth about the U.S. Constitution and our federal judiciary. These efforts have been going on for years. We also have exciting new programs to improve the careers and the lives of our members, like the Judicial Internship Academy started by Judge Beth Bloom.

And of course, FBA members—both practitioners and federal judges—collectively gather hundreds of times annually in our chapters, sections, and divisions for CLE, receptions, awards ceremonies, bar admission events, social nights, and so much more.

All of these interactions represent FBA members who are connected for good to do good.

Perhaps even more importantly, we also are connected for good to feel good.

There is another meaning to the phrase “connected for good.” FBA members that continually and faithfully serve and gather are able to connect with others “for good,” as in permanently—or at least a really long time. As you may have heard me say in the past, many of my life-long friends I met through the FBA. I hope that you have enjoyed similar experiences and built long-lasting friendships through your time in the FBA.

Our FBA membership also gives us the opportunity to meet and connect with each other in a less permanent, but nevertheless important, way as we serve and learn together.

Our FBA connections are perhaps more important than we realize.

I have been fascinated to see the recent rise of highly popular college classes focusing on happiness. As one example, Professor Laurie Santos teaches a class called “The Science of Well-Being” that is the most popular class in Yale University’s history.¹ More than a quarter of all Yale students have enrolled.²

In studying happiness, Professor Santos reports that “the No. 1 thing people can do to feel happier … would be engaging in social connection. Every available study of happy people suggests that happy people are more social, they spend more time physically around other people, and they invest time in their friends and family members.³

Because FBA members already have so much in common, our pathway to a higher quantity and quality of connections is found in joining and enjoying our events and our people.

That opportunity is part of the reason that the national membership decline in associations like the FBA is so sad to me. As a result of COVID, social media, and for other reasons, people are losing connections.⁴

I believe that the opposite of depression is not necessarily happiness. To me, the opposite of depression is connection. Again, science supports this theory. Numerous scientific studies have found that positive connections, such as those the FBA offers, can quite literally lead to longer life, better health, and improved well-being.⁵ As we invite others to become FBA members, we are literally offering the opportunity to establish connections that can dramatically change our careers and our lives for the better.

I invite you to join with me in becoming more involved in the FBA, in using our FBA membership to increase the quality and quantity of our connections, and in inviting others to do the same.

Through the FBA, we truly can be connected for good. 8

Endnotes

¹ Renée Onque, Yale Happiness Expert: The No. 1 You Can Do to Be Happier—Businesses Can Also Use It to Excel. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/12/yale-happiness-expert-the-no-1-thing-you-can-do-to-be-happier.html.

² David Shimer, Yale’s Most Popular Class Ever: Happiness, The New York Times, Jan. 6, 2018.

³ Onque, supra note 1.

⁴ U.S. Dep’t of Health and Human Services, New Surgeon General Advisory Raises Alarm about the Devastating Impact of the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation in the United States, May 3, 2023, https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/05/03/new-surgeon-general-advisory-raises-alarm-about-devastating-impact-epidemic-loneliness-isolation-united-states.html.

⁵ See, e.g., Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-Analytic Review. PLoS Med. 2010; Lem K, McGilton KS, Aelick K, et al. Social Connection and Physical Health Outcomes Among Long-term Care Home Residents: A Scoping Review, BMC Geriatrics. 2021;21:722; Martino J, Pegg J, Frates EP, The Connection Prescription: Using the Power of Social Interactions and the Deep Desire for Connectedness to Empower Health and Wellness, Am J Lifestyle Med. 2015; 11(6):466-475; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System, The National Academies Press; 2020; Anderson GO, Thayer C. AARP Foundation, Loneliness and social connections: a national survey of adults 45 and older. AARP Research. 2018.