Proclamation 3515—Law Day, U.S.A., 1963

The story of man's advance from savagery to civilization is the story of reason and morality displacing brutal force. While law is reason systematized, it is more than reason alone. A great justice of our Supreme Court said long ago, "The law is the witness and external deposit of our moral life. Its history is the history of the moral development of the race."

In a time when all men are properly concerned lest nations, forgetting law, reason, and moral existence, turn to mutual destruction, we have all the more need to work for a day when law may govern nations as it does men within nations; when systematized reason may bring us a confident future; when the moral development of the human race may assure us a peaceful and law-abiding world.

In 1961 the Congress by joint resolution wisely designated as "Law Day, U.S.A." the first day of each May. Thus, "Law Day, U.S.A." becomes the significant answer to Communism's May Day demonstrations, and calls on our people to rededicate themselves to ideals of equality and justice in their relations with one another and to the same ideals in relations with other nations.

Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, to support and emphasize this congressional resolution, do hereby request the people of our country to observe the first day of May, 1963, with such ceremonies and observances as will suitably signalize this great aspiration. I urge that civic and service organizations, schools, public bodies, and the media of information join in this educational observance, and further call upon all officials to display the nation's flag on public buildings on that day in token of our dedication to government under law.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this twenty-fifth day of January in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-seventh.

JOHN F. KENNEDY

By the President:

DEAN RUSK,

Secretary of State