I thank Stanford Law School for my excellent legal education—I was in the class of ’71, a time when few women had gone to law school and a time when the Constitutional system was being tested. It became a beacon of light, a way to liberty for us.

Gender Equity

Admitted to the law school in the spring as part of the usual class, I certainly was part of the effect of more women admitted in the uncertainty surrounding the Vietnam conflict. In fact, 5 of us in the class of ’71 were from Vassar College, testament to the training and expectations of Vassar women. Yet, times were changing and we entered with enough numbers to make a difference and help adapt the school to gender equity, leaving upon graduation to make our own changes in the legal profession and society.

To put in context of the fall of ’68 when we entered, Stanford had never had a female dean; there were no female professors or administrators. Some professors needlessly challenged us. Some professors were concerned about: the admission of women diminished the status of the legal profession; the ability of the courts to decide issues pertaining to women increased judicial caseloads; the resolution of issues pertaining to women was determined in the courts rather than in the legislative arena; or the effect on Stanford Law School of having an equal number of female students to male students. Some male students were upset: “How could we take the rightful place of a man in the class of ’71?” Others did not listen to us. We women students were learning to deal with each other too, as entry into the professional world of men was new and we had no role models.

We did not particularly have a guarantee of legal employment after law school. Recall that Sandra Day O’Connor, Stanford Law School graduate, could not get legal employment upon graduation (and Prof. Gerry Gunther said he had to guarantee the judge who accepted Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a clerkship that he would find him a male replacement if Ruth did not work out). San Francisco firms in general were not hiring women (for a summer job, I went through the SF phone book to call firms to find a legal position).

When we started and when we finished law school, the legal status of women was not equal. Women lost rights upon marriage. Women could not get credit in their own name. The Equal Pay Act was enacted in 1963 (and courts narrowly construed that statute). Title VII, prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sex, was enacted in 1964 (but it was not until 1987 that the Supreme Court ruled in Hishon v. King and Spaulding that law firms were employers rather than private partnerships or associations, so Title VII employment protections were extended to women attorneys). While the Supreme Court had ruled that a married couple, not the state, could determine if they used contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1967), it was not until Roe v. Wade, 1973, that a woman was deemed entitled to determine (with her doctor) whether to obtain an abortion. There was no protection from sexual harassment and domestic violence cases were seldom prosecuted. In 1971, the year we graduated from law school, the court determined in Reed v. Reed that the state of Idaho could not mandate preference for men over women to administer probate estates that such preference violated the equal protection clause for there was no rational basis for this distinction.

Yet, the times were changing by the time we entered law school in the fall of 1968 note the above employment laws and Supreme court recognition of some right to control one’s body. Note the protests on the Stanford campus, rallies, and (Nixon was right) inspiring music (think Janis Joplin in Golden Gate Park, Jimi Hendrix in Oakland, Country Joe around the Bay). We women law students even were present at Stanford demonstrations to be legal observers (and since we were women, asked to make the coffee and perform clerical chores). We organized a psychology group to discuss gender issues but disbanded when the psychologist insisted that objectivity and logic were male traits and subjectivity and emotions were female traits. I think in the process of reading cases and attending law school, most of us began to think of ourselves as lawyers and minds first, gender second.

In my own case, I had married at a young age, had two children, audited at the then all male schools my husband attended (Kenyon and Yale), graduated from Vassar (then all female to which I commuted from New Haven), and went to Stanford Law School after I got divorced.

I personally had no belief that the legal profession would be open for women to practice. But, after law school, I was hired by an international law firm Coudert Brothers in Manhattan, a new experience for them. Yet, while an excellent firm, they continued to hold their attorney meetings in the all-male Sky Club and to shelter clients from knowing that a young female had worked on their project. I was not attracted by practice of law as a business; rather, I liked a philanthropic, states person approach so I went to the ACLU Women’s Rights Project for focus on gender equity. Based on that work, in 1975, I became the attorney for the California Legislature’s Joint Committee on Legal Equality to provide gender equity in California’s laws (and coordinated with and became chair of the State Bar Comm. on Human Rights).

Then, I was the attorney for Gov. Jerry Brown in the Dept. Of Industrial Relations to focus on women’s issues. I wrote and worked the California pregnancy leave bill with then California Assembly member Howard Berman. We were ahead of the federal law and it was a challenge. The bill, of course presented pregnancy as a temporary disability as any other temporary disability; yet, we added another dimension to our arguments that pregnancy was a human condition necessary to the perpetuation of the human race and therefore also should be accorded special status by its unique and essential status (many women’s groups disagreed with this). The law was upheld in California Federation Savings and Loan Assn. v. Guerra. Of course, this leave has been extended to include parental leave and, in some places, paid leave.

Other laws expanded, enforced and litigated were the equal pay act, minimum wage, prevailing wages, women in the trades, special trades as garment workers, and fair employment practices. I was the chair of the California Comparable Worth Task Force from 1984 to 1985, which held hearings and wrote a report about the efficacy of using comparable worth to address women’s historic pay inequity. This was in the context of the groundbreaking litigation, AFSCME v. State of Washington; the usage of comparable worth was upheld at the federal district court level, but was overturned by 9th Cir. (but set for rehearing by 9th Cir. when plaintiffs settled and the case no longer had standing). In reality, this end of litigation was the end of touting the comparable worth resolution; yet, there has been expansion of redress as statutory coverage and judicial interpretation have included “substantially equal” and “equivalent pay”. As the chair of the committee, I was told by the Republican Governor of the state how to vote against adopting the standard. But, chosen for my commitment to women’s rights and a Democrat, I would not change my perspective or vote; there was retaliation and I was the subject of a fallacious suit that I was not doing my job, was insubordinate and deserved a pay decrease. I persisted and fought this I won on the merits of challenges to my job performance (over 30 asserted counts). Yet, I lost on the insubordination charges: being present without leave at the State Bar annual meeting (I was Chair of the Women in the Law Committee of the California State Bar, giving a talk with all of my co-attorneys sitting before me), and for mumbling about the Chief Counsel (under my breath as I walked away from him). I was next assigned to be the hearing officer for an OSHA case, but I quit that morning to work part time at Pillsbury, Madison and Sutro.

This, and later, part time work at another law firm were experiments in trying to adapt the legal profession to part time legal work: an attempt to reduce work hours, to allow for other pursuits and needs. I was on the board of New Ways to Work and wanted time to write and paint, yet still stay in touch with the law. I found part time incompatible with good legal assignments, position within the firm, and pay; yet I appreciated the time to pursue these other interests and I applaud the firms for trying (this was late 80’s just when the Hishon case was decided).

In addition to my legal work, I taught government/constitutional law, and also women’s rights, as an adjunct at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Public Policy. I was on the Marin County Commission on the Status of Women for a decade, a chair for two years, to assure that the county was properly addressing the above employment issues and responding to the needs of women in the county. As President of California Women Lawyers, I urged the California State Bar to create a Committee on Women in the Law to address the status of women attorneys and the gender equity in the court system. Also, we filed amicus briefs and suggested/lobbied for legislation favorable to women, as well as coordinated information with the local women’s bar associations. I was chair of that State Bar Committee on Women in the Law, as well as the State Bar Committee on Human Rights, and also chair of the California Legislative Roundtable of women’s groups to coordinate legislative strategy by these groups. I mention these to underscore the interaction, interweaving, of advocacy groups efforts to achieve gender equality.

In addition, I organized women of the class of ’71 (and some women in surrounding classes at the law school) into Stanford Women Lawyers, to raise the school’s attention to women students and gender issues, to mentor, and to serve as support for each other as we worked to integrate the law (one project was creating a scholarship supporting a student with demonstrated interest in gender equity).

Being an attorney certainly helped; women attorneys certainly advanced the rights of women. Legal expertise also helped in other forums. The United States State Department asked me to write a report on pay and pregnancy status for the OECD member countries (Paris, 1989) ; I wrote the legal status of domestic violence responses in the United States for the US. State Dept. for the UN (1994) ; and, in return, I was asked by the State Department to organize women’s groups to deter war in the Balkan Peninsula (1994) (I did not go as I thought it too late to make a difference there, but not too late to educate Americans about the Constitution).

Constitutional Education

I particularly loved studying the Constitution of the United States. It was a form of sanity, a common-sense agreement to live by certain rules and avoid the effects of a despot. My favorite class was taught by Prof. Gerry Gunther, who was brought to the United States at age 6 by his parents escaping the Nazi Germans after Kristallnacht. His memories of entering New York Harbor and seeing the Statue of Liberty are inspiring. His nuanced, erudite, passionate teaching of the Constitution, as well as my own gender discrimination experiences, inspired me to focus much of my life on the Constitution.

First, I taught from Gerry’s casebook, with its thorough and thoughtful footnotes, at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Public Policy (noted above). I would call him to chat about the class interest and his footnote observation she was pleased. He encouraged me in my project to educate citizenry about the Constitution (and he inscribed his Learned Hand book to me as a “fellow laborer in the Constitutional vineyards”). I drafted three different books; I was promised publication by an editor (HUP), although he ended up giving the ideas to two other authors. One was a primer on the constitution showing the need for the Constitution; another longer one was a balancing of power statement in the Constitution; and yet a third longer one was a clause by clause journey through the Constitution. Gunther thought they were needed and useful.

I want to appeal to the nonlawyer citizen and activist those who can vote and those who may undertake civic activity. I recently taught a short course on the Constitution at a Greenwich Village library, addressed a citizenship class at a California library, and—for years—was a judge from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office for “We the People”, a program to train high school students in the Constitution. Obviously, it would certainly be helpful now if more people were aware of our Constitutional provisions.

The beautiful balancing of the Constitution’s powers and the nuances of interpreting and applying the Constitution involve philosophy of law, and thus the philosophy of life. Our Constitution creates certainties, raises our expectations, and comforts that there is a clause—ideas sparsely expressed perhaps, yet a concept that can be applied if needed to provide for exigent circumstances. It provides a basis for our lives.

I am grateful for knowledge from Stanford Law School constitutional studies.

Knowledge and Thinking

Not only the legal knowledge to be able to act effectively in the real world, but the ability to think and find arguments that appeal was important. Law school trained our minds. One dean said that when the law school was through with us, we would be fungible. Appalled by this (how could I lose my uniqueness?), I now understand that it means giving us a common language, a common base of information, and a common way to approach a problem and sort out reasoning and consequences. It is a way to find the priorities and the next steps, and also how to meet adverse arguments and power.

Crafting arguments that appeal is a basic legal strength. Arguments that appeal are our strength in using the law to control our or a client’s situation or to advocate a policy, whether it be in the legislative, executive or judicial branch or it be in in the court of public opinion. (I assume a person had a legal background if they assert three arguments or points, as I am doing in this essay otherwise, it seems incomplete (or under thought) and if it has three, it seems sorted out (and prioritized).

Much of this “arguments that appeal” involves common sense and a gut feeling, with the law added to work out the pragmatics and the logic. An example of common sense is the long essay “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine; written in the spring of 1776, it was influential in its arguments that we may as well declare our independence from the British, as the British were not going to improve their behavior and actually how could an island control a continent? “The Federalist Papers”, written starting in 1787 after the Constitutional Convention was sent the Constitution for ratification by the states, was to explain the final document and seek its approval by the states; as such, it was the ultimate pragmatic statement of Constitutional thinking of the Founding Fathers.

Observations are key. DeToqueville, in 1839, travelled to America and observed that democracy had taken hold and that even citizens on the frontier had informed opinions (in “Democracy in America”). Contrasted is deCustine’s work of the same decade, when he travelled to Russia, about czarist Russia and the lack of independence of thought since only the czar’s opinion counted. Both books explain common sense truths, still valid as to these countries today.

Common sense arguments work best. Everyday examples of arguing using common sense are three-minute testimony at public hearings—honing the brief message to be effective. At San Jose public library testimony for increased funding to keep the library open, I asserted that a great city deserved a great library, that the library served a unique role as an individual could move at their own pace for their own needs, and that the community would benefit from a more self-educated person. At NYC mass transit hearing testimony opposed to shutting down the 14th Street crosstown “L” subway, I was pragmatic; after merely commenting on potential constitutional “taking” by the city, I mentioned a gas leak near Google’s NYC national headquarters which the gas company had not been able to find or fix after looking for months and noting firetrucks and EMTs would not be able to get through the clogged side streets. In any event, the SJ Library got its funding and the Governor of New York stopped the shutdown of the subway.

Related issues of mental construct are many. What is the “reasonable man” standard? What is a rational relationship? What should the standard of review be? Development of the “subjective” standard of view, used instead of an “objective” standard in determining behavior (especially in cases such as domestic violence) recognizes the importance of the mind how the law has to accommodate thinking to be deemed rational and applicable to create the rules and laws and decisions affecting us. One litigator told me he writes down his first impression of a case, so he does not lose the human thread or his gut reaction as he wends his way through the facts and legal procedure. I found my legal education helped as I drafted laws or regulations thinking through all the possible situations, pitfalls and benefits.

Thinking leads to the creative. Examples in my life are: scripts, novel/essays/memoir pieces, and concept paintings. The impulse to find the truth by thinking can be sought in many artistic forms. For all such art is just expressing an opinion and one has to determine, or find, what one’s opinion is. When one approaches a piece of paper, one is expressing an opinion be it art or words.

Writing scripts, one lets the imagination run (I placed twice at Sundance’s screenwriters’ competition and even directed a scene at directors’ workshop there). The concept paintings are an associational assemblage of images, colors, excerpts from an individual writer for a unique point of view, a postcard for the common point of view, and a title to identify the truth of the painting—I call them “Remarkables” and they are not only opinions on paper but actual words on paper (I was shown in the San Francisco Museum of Art artist’s gallery).

My law degree has led me to prefer creations of the mind. I recently returned to a senior thesis I wrote at Vassar, on James Joyce’s “Portrait of an Artist”; the man moved from stultifying Catholic ideology through examination of Catholic philosophers St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to focus on how an individual can find the truth by establishing his own rules and order in life, reexamining his life through this filter of the life of an artist, the individual as creator. I credit my time in Paris, where my sister lives, to increased value of the life of an artist.

Indeed, many lawyers have turned to art. One 19th Century example is Jules Breton, trained as a lawyer, who became a poet, painter comparable to Corot and Millet, and memoirist who captured the Impressionists fights with the established Paris art scene. In homage, I love to gaze at his “The Weeders” at the NYC Metropolitan Art Museum, just as I love to gaze at Stanford’s Cantor Center at a painting of the Stanford family at the croquet set (showing boys and girls playing equally), at Robert Motherwell’s “S” created for the new Stanford Law Building, and at Andy Goldsworthy’s “S” in the ground at Stanford near Rodin’s “Thinker”.

I am pleased that my Stanford law degree has enabled me to enjoy many other ways of thinking and finding the essence of life, to develop my own intellectual and artistic values. Finally, the Statue of Liberty, created to urge for political change in France and now a beacon of liberty for us all, applies as we take what we learned at Stanford and disseminate it through our works in the world. Thank you, Stanford.