上週，一位哈佛大學法學院教授站在講台上，告訴即將畢業的學生們，他們的資歷並不等於他們的資格。他沒有說出那句話，而是選擇了一個哈比人作為榜樣。
大多數人講述本傑明·薩克斯最後一次演講的故事是：這位教授出人意料地引用了托爾金的作品，而不是羅爾斯的作品。這只是一個比較有趣的版本。而真實的版本是：這位哈佛法學院的資深勞動法學學者，在下一代公司律師面前，選擇將《哈比人》三部曲中戲份最少的角色作為他們的榜樣。他本可以給他們阿拉貢，但他選擇了弗羅多。這個選擇本身就是整篇演講的精髓。
阿拉貢是律師們心目中的英雄。他是合法的國王。他的王位是世襲的，他的寶劍是重鑄的，他的血統就是他的資格。在三部曲中，他遇到的每個人都認出他注定要成為的那個人。道路為他彎曲。埃爾隆德知道。加拉德瑞爾知道。山下的亡靈也知道。當他抵達米那斯提力斯時，這座城市實際上已經等著他到來，等著他成為他命中註定的那個人。阿拉貢的出現，正是製度與個人在誰才是真正重要的議題上達成共識的結果。王冠注定會戴在他頭上。這個故事就像是慢慢揭開一個世人早已知曉的事實。
弗羅多則完全不同。他身材矮小，地位卑微，沒有接受過任何訓練，也沒有被任何有權選擇他的人選中。從字面上講，他的身材根本不適合這項任務。埃爾隆德的會議擠滿了戰士、巫師和精靈，他們都能把魔戒帶得更遠更快，而魔戒卻落到了哈比人手中，因為哈比人是房間裡唯一一個身材矮小到魔戒還不知道該如何處置他的人。他的資格就是他微不足道，不值得被注意。
薩克斯選擇的是這一部分。不是國王歸來奪回他一直擁有的東西，而是那個毫不起眼的人走進魔多，因為任何擁有合適身份的人都無法被信任通過魔多之門。今年早些時候，我曾寫過法拉米爾的故事。他明白，我們表彰的人通常並非真正做出貢獻的人，而頒發榮譽的機構往往也是讓工作更難進行的機構。薩克斯的演講以一種更為溫和的方式表達了同樣的觀察。他告訴即將獲得全國最具權威性的證書之一的在場眾人，證書並不能拯救他們。真正能改變現狀的人往往是那些默默無聞、難以被輕易選中的人。頒發證書的機構並非旨在將證書頒發給真正需要使用證書的人。
他並沒有直接說出這些話，而是藉弗羅多之口表達了出來。但這位站在講台上的勞動法學者有著豐富的經驗。在哈佛之前，他曾在服務業僱員國際工會工作。在此之前，他曾是布魯克林一家名為「步行開路」（Make the Road by Walking）的組織的律師。當他告訴2026年畢業生，他們必須“開闢道路”，而這條路原本並不存在時，他並非在用比喻。那句話是他以前工作的名稱。
他舉的兩個歷史例子也並非律師的故事。弗林特靜坐罷工是汽車工人在通用汽車工廠車間靜坐，導致工廠停工。格林斯伯勒午餐櫃檯事件是四個大學一年級學生在一個週日晚上決定坐下來點杯咖啡。這兩個運動的領導者都不具備相應的資格。它們都由那些被體制認定為無關緊要的小人物領導，事後都進行了追溯性的法律修改，彷彿一切都已成定局。
阿拉貢的特別之處在於，體制對他的評價是正確的。他就是他們所說的那個人。王冠與他相符。故事也印證了他的資歷。
弗羅多的問題在於，那些機構對他的看法是錯的。魔戒本應由更高大、更強壯、訓練有素、血統純正的人持有。然而，它卻落入了那些機構不屑一顧的人手中，因為這些機構根本無法勝任這項任務。托爾金筆下的故事，正是資格與資質的崩塌，以及兩者之間的鴻溝，拯救了世界。
他也寫到了演講中未提及的一點：弗羅多失敗了。在末日火山的裂縫處，魔戒握在手中，接下來的三十秒，彷彿三本書的篇幅都濃縮於此，弗羅多卻選擇將魔戒據為己有。他沒有摧毀它。整個冒險，每一段路程，沿途失去的每一位朋友，最終都以這位渺小、不起眼的英雄凝視著火焰，做出了錯誤的選擇而告終。魔戒最終被摧毀，只是因為咕嚕咬掉了他的一根手指，然後帶著手指掉進了熔岩之中。
托爾金寫了一個故事，哈比人在最後一刻失敗了，但這個故事依然精彩，因為故事的重點從來不在於哈比人是否成功，而在於誰在運送魔戒的過程中承擔了責任。成功只是副產品，運送本身才是關鍵。
演講中沒有提及的另一件事，而且在那種情況下，如果說出口，整個房間都會失去氣氛，那就是弗羅多並非獨自一人攜帶魔戒。是山姆背著他。山姆，這個沒有出現在標題中、沒有資格獲得認可、在書中大部分時間都被視為僕人的人，正是把弗羅多從末日火山邊扶起來，背著他走完剩下的路程的人。
真正完成這項工作的哈比人，是議會在決定誰來攜帶魔戒時，完全沒有考慮過的人。在這個故事裡，真正有資格的人甚至不是弗羅多。資格認證的關鍵在於那位無人提及的園丁，那位因為沒被邀請留在家裡而不得不隨行的朋友，那位在學校裡完全被忽視的人。
薩克斯沒有提到山姆。他無需提及。房間裡的學生們，未來將要肩負起決定哪些山姆可以進入這棟大樓的重任。
弗羅多不在那間房間裡。房間裡坐滿了哈佛的學生。但他還是把這個故事講給了他們聽，因為總有一天，他們中的某個人可能會被要求保護一個弗羅多，他希望當他來的時候，他們能夠認出他。
A
Harvard University Law professor stood at a podium last week and told the graduating class that their credentials were not their qualification. He did it without saying the sentence. He picked a hobbit instead.
The story most people will tell about Benjamin Sachs’s last lecture is that a professor surprised his audience by quoting Tolkien instead of Rawls. That is the charming version. The actual version is that a senior labor scholar at Harvard Law School chose, in front of the next generation of corporate attorneys, to hand them the smallest character in the trilogy as their model. He could have given them Aragorn. He gave them Frodo. The choice was the whole sermon.
Aragorn is the lawyer’s hero. He is the rightful king. His claim is hereditary, his blade is reforged, and his lineage is the qualification. He spends three books being recognized by everyone he meets as the person he was already going to be. The road bends to receive him. Elrond knows. Galadriel knows. The dead under the mountain know. By the time he reaches Minas Tirith, the city is essentially waiting for him to arrive and become what he already is. Aragorn is what happens when the institution and the person agree about who matters. The crown was always going to fit. The story is the slow unveiling of a fact the world already knew.
Frodo has none of that. He is small. He has no standing. He is not trained for the task. He was not selected by anyone with the authority to select him. He is, in a literal sense, the wrong size for the job. The Council of Elrond is full of warriors and wizards and elves who could carry the ring further and faster, and the ring goes to the hobbit because the hobbit is the only one in the room small enough that the ring does not yet know what to do with him. His qualification is that he is beneath notice.
This is the part Sachs picked. Not the king returning to claim what was always his. The unimpressive person walking into Mordor because no one with the proper credentials could be trusted to make it past the gate.
I wrote earlier this year about Faramir, who understood that the people we honor are usually not the people doing the work, and that the institutions handing out honors are often the same institutions making the work harder to do. Sachs’s speech is a quieter version of the same observation. He told a room full of people about to receive one of the most credentialing pieces of paper in the country that the credential would not save them. That the people who actually change anything are usually too small to be obvious picks. The institutions that issue qualifications were not built to hand them out to the people who will need to use them.
He did not say this directly. He said it through Frodo. But the labor scholar at the podium has a biography. Before Harvard, he worked at the Service Employees International Union. Before that, he was a lawyer at Make the Road by Walking, an organization in Brooklyn. When he told the Class of 2026 that they would have to “make the road” where one did not yet exist, that phrase was not a metaphor he reached for. That phrase was the name of his old job.
The two historical examples he gave were not lawyer stories, either. The Flint sit-down strikes were autoworkers shutting down GM by sitting on the factory floor. The Greensboro lunch counters were four first-year college students who, on a Sunday night, decided to sit down and order coffee. Neither of those movements was led by people with the proper qualifications. Both were led by people the institutions had decided were too small to matter, and both rewrote the law afterward, in retrospect, once the work was already done.
The thing about Aragorn is that the institutions are correct about him. He is who they say he is. The crown fits. The story confirms the credentials.
The thing about Frodo is that the institutions are wrong about him. The ring should have been carried by someone bigger, stronger, properly trained, with the right pedigree. It was carried by the person the institutions had no use for because the institutions were not built for the job that needed doing. Tolkien wrote a story in which the credentials and the qualifications come apart, and the world is saved by the gap between them.
He also wrote something the speech did not mention: that Frodo fails. At the crack of Mount Doom, with the ring in his hand and the work of three books standing on the next thirty seconds, Frodo claims the ring for himself. He does not destroy it. The whole quest, every mile of it, every friend lost along the way, ends with the small, unimpressive hero looking into the fire and choosing the wrong thing. The ring is only destroyed because Gollum bites the finger off his hand and falls into the lava with it.
Tolkien wrote a story in which the hobbit fails at the last possible moment, and the story still works, because the story was never about whether the hobbit would succeed. The story was about who was carrying the thing while it was being carried. The success was a byproduct. The carrying was the point.
The other thing the speech did not say, and could not have said in that room without losing the room entirely, is that Frodo did not carry the ring alone. Sam carried him. Sam, who is not in the title, who does not get the credential, who in the books is treated as a servant for most of the journey, is the one who picks Frodo up off the side of Mount Doom and carries him the rest of the way.
The hobbit who actually finishes the work is the one nobody at the Council was looking at when they were deciding who would carry the ring. The qualification in this story is not even Frodo. The qualification is the gardener nobody mentioned, the friend who came along because he was not invited to stay home, the person whose entire role in the institution was to be ignored by it.
Sachs did not mention Sam. He did not need to. The students in that room were going to spend their careers being the people who decided which Sams were allowed in the building.
Frodo was not in that room. That room was full of Harvard students. He told them the story anyway, because one day one of them might be asked to protect a Frodo, and he wanted them to recognize him when he came.
班傑明·I·薩克斯
凱斯特鮑姆勞動與產業學教授
班傑明·I·薩克斯
班傑明‧薩克斯是哈佛大學法學院凱斯特鮑姆勞動與產業學教授，也是勞動法與勞資關係領域的權威專家。他同時也是勞動與公正經濟中心主任。薩克斯教授教授勞動法和就業法課程，其研究方向主要集中在工會組織和美國政治的工會問題。在2008年加入哈佛大學之前，薩克斯教授曾任耶魯大學法學院約瑟夫‧戈德斯坦研究員。 2002年至2006年，他擔任華盛頓特區服務業僱員國際工會（SEIU）助理總法律顧問；1999年至2002年，他曾擔任紐約布魯克林一家名為“步行之路”（Make the Road by Walking）的會員制社區組織的律師。薩克斯教授於1998年畢業於耶魯大學法學院，曾擔任美國第九巡迴上訴法院史蒂芬‧萊因哈特法官的法律助理。他的文章發表於《哈佛法律評論》、《耶魯法律雜誌》、《哥倫比亞法律評論》、《紐約時報》等刊物。 2007年，薩克斯教授榮獲耶魯大學法學院教學獎。他也是2013年哈佛大學法學院薩克斯風弗羅因德卓越教學獎的得主，也是2015年查爾斯弗里德知識多元化獎的得主。
代表著作
班傑明‧薩克斯與凱特‧安德里亞斯合著，《法律與組織之雞生蛋還是蛋生雞：制定政策以建構權力》，載《哥倫比亞法律評論》第124卷，第777頁（2024年）。
凱特·安德里亞斯和班傑明·薩克斯合著，《建構制衡力量：政治不平等時代的法律與組織》，載《耶魯法律雜誌》第130卷，第546頁（2021年）。
本傑明·I·薩克斯著，《儘管先佔：城市和州的勞動法制定》，載《哈佛法律評論》第124卷，第1153頁（2011年）。
查看本傑明·I·薩克斯的所有代表性出版物
近期出版品
班傑明‧薩克斯，《激進基金中的法律、組織（與慈善事業）》，載《巴爾金化》（2025年10月21日）。
莎倫布洛克和班傑明薩克斯合著，《工會依然很受歡迎。但我們的勞動法還沒有跟上時代步伐》，載《MS NOW》（2025年9月1日）。
查看本傑明·I·薩克斯的所有出版物
Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and a leading expert in the field of labor law and labor relations. He is also faculty director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy. Professor Sachs teaches courses in labor law and employment law, and his writing focuses on union organizing and unions in American politics. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2008, Professor Sachs was the Joseph Goldstein Fellow at Yale Law School. From 2002-2006, he served as Assistant General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, D.C., and from 1999-2002 he was an attorney at Make the Road by Walking, a membership-based community organization in Brooklyn, NY. Professor Sachs graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, and served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the New York Times and elsewhere. In 2007, Professor Sachs received the Yale Law School teaching award. He is also the 2013 recipient of the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School, and the 2015 winner of the Charles Fried Intellectual Diversity Award.
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