That's a very light resume for a SCT justice.
How's this?
From the East Coast to Arkansas
During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[52] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[53] During 1974 she was a member of the impeachment inquiry staff in Washington, D.C., advising the House Committee on the Judiciary during the Watergate scandal.[54] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum,[38] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment.[55] The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.[55]
By then, Rodham was viewed as someone with a bright political future; Democratic political organizer and consultant Betsey Wright had moved from Texas to Washington the previous year to help guide her career;[56] Wright thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president.[57] Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she had continued to demur.[58] However, after failing the District of Columbia bar exam[59] and passing the Arkansas exam, Rodham came to a key decision. As she later wrote, "I chose to follow my heart instead of my head".[60] She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were brighter. Clinton was at the time teaching law and running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in his home state. In August 1974, she moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and became one of only two female faculty members in the School of Law at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville,[61] where Bill Clinton also taught. She still harbored doubts about marriage, concerned that her separate identity would be lost and that her accomplishments would be viewed in the light of someone else's.[62]
Early Arkansas years
Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton bought a house in Fayetteville in the summer of 1975, and Hillary finally agreed to marriage.[63] Their wedding took place on October 11, 1975, in a Methodist ceremony in their living room.[64] She kept the name Hillary Rodham, later writing that she had done so to keep their professional lives separate and avoid seeming conflicts of interest, although her decision upset both their mothers.[65] Bill Clinton had lost the Congressional race in 1974, but in November 1976 was elected Arkansas Attorney General, and so the couple moved to the state capital of Little Rock.[66] There, in February 1977, Rodham joined the venerable Rose Law Firm, a bastion of Arkansan political and economic influence.[67] She specialized in patent infringement and intellectual property law,[36] while also working pro bono in child advocacy;[68] she rarely performed litigation work in court.[69]
Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[70] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[71] The latter continued her argument that children's legal competence depended upon their age and other circumstances, and that serious medical rights cases, judicial intervention was sometimes warranted.[50] An American Bar Association chair later said, "Her articles were important, not because they were radically new but because they helped formulate something that had been inchoate."[50] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades",[72] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[73] allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[50] and argued that her work was legal "crit" theory run amok.[74]
Also in 1977, Rodham co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund.[36][75] And later that same year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had done 1976 campaign coordination work in Indiana[76]) appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation,[77] and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981.[78] From mid-1978 to mid-1980[79] she served as the chair of that board, the first woman to do so.[80] During her time as chair, funding for the Corporation was expanded from $90 million to $300 million; subsequently she successfully fought President Ronald Reagan's attempts to reduce the funding and change the nature of the organization.[68]
Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for a total of twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year,[81] where she successfully secured federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas's poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.[82]
In 1979, Rodham became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm.[83] From 1978 until they entered the White House, she had a higher salary than her husband.[84] During 1978 and 1979, while looking to supplement their income, Rodham made a spectacular profit from trading cattle futures contracts;[85] an initial $1,000 investment generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months.[86] The couple also began their ill-fated investment in the Whitewater Development Corporation real estate venture with Jim and Susan McDougal at this time.[85]
On February 27, 1980, Rodham gave birth to a daughter, Chelsea, her only child. In November 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his bid for reelection.
Later Arkansas years
Governor Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton attend the 1987 Dinner Honoring the Nation's Governors with President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan.Bill Clinton returned to the governor's office two years later by winning the election of 1982. During her husband's campaign, Rodham began to use the name Hillary Clinton, or sometimes "Mrs. Bill Clinton", to assuage the concerns of Arkansas voters;[87] she also took a leave of absence from Rose Law in order to campaign for him full-time.[88] As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton was named chair of the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee in 1983, where she sought to reform the state's court-sanctioned public education system.[89][90] In one of the Clinton governorship's most important initiatives, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association, to establish mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size.[89][81] In 1985, she also introduced Arkansas's Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.[91] She was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.[92][93]
Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm while she was First Lady of Arkansas. She earned less than the other partners, as she billed fewer hours,[94] but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there.[95] She seldom did trial work,[95] but the firm considered her a "rainmaker" because she brought in clients, partly thanks to the prestige she lent the firm and to her corporate board connections.[95] She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[95] Bill Clinton's Republican opponent in his 1986 gubernatorial reelection campaign accused the Clintons of conflict of interest, because Rose Law did state business; the Clintons deflected the charge by saying that state fees were walled off by the firm before her profits were calculated.[96]
From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation,[97] which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.[98] From 1987 to 1991, she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession,[99] which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it.[99] She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991.[100] When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary considered running herself, but private polls were unfavorable and in the end he ran and was reelected for the final time.[101]
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992)[102] and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).[103][3] In addition to her positions with non-profit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992),[104] Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992)[105] and Lafarge (1990–1992).[106] TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[95][107] Clinton was the first female member on Wal-Mart's board, added following pressure on chairman Sam Walton to name a woman to the board.[107] Once there, she pushed successfully for Wal-Mart to adopt more environmentally friendly practices, was largely unsuccessful in a campaign for more women to be added to the company's management, and was silent about the company's famously anti-labor union practices.[107][108][105]
1992 Bill Clinton presidential campaign
Hillary Rodham Clinton, 1992Hillary Clinton received sustained national attention for the first time when her husband became a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination of 1992. Before the New Hampshire primary, tabloid publications printed claims that Bill Clinton had had an extramarital affair with Arkansas lounge singer Gennifer Flowers.[109] In response, the Clintons appeared together on 60 Minutes, where Bill Clinton denied the affair but acknowledged he had caused "pain" in their marriage.[110] This joint appearance was credited with rescuing his campaign.[111] During the campaign, Hillary Clinton made culturally dismissive remarks about Tammy Wynette and her outlook on marriage,[112] and about women staying home and baking cookies and having teas,[113] that were ill-considered by her own admission. Bill Clinton said that electing him would get "two for the price of one" or "buy one, get one free", referring to the prominent role his wife would assume.[114][115] Beginning with Daniel Wattenberg's August 1992 The American Spectator article "The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock", Hillary Clinton's own past ideological and ethical record came under conservative attack.[73]
First Lady of the United States
Role as First Lady
When Bill Clinton took office as president in January 1993, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States, and announced that she would be using that form of her name.[116] She was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree[117] and to have her own professional career up to the time of entering the White House.[117] She was also the first to take up an office in the West Wing of the White House:[47] the First Lady usually stays in the East Wing. She is regarded as the most openly empowered presidential wife in American history, save for Eleanor Roosevelt.[118][119]
The Clinton family arrives at the White House courtesy of Marine One, 1993.Some critics called it inappropriate for the First Lady to play a central role in matters of public policy. Supporters pointed out that Clinton's role in policy was no different from that of other White House advisors and that voters were well aware that she would play an active role in her husband's presidency.[120] Bill Clinton's campaign promise of "two for the price of one" led opponents to refer derisively to the Clintons as "co-presidents",[121] or sometimes the Arkansas label "Billary".[122][81] The pressures of conflicting ideas about the role of a First Lady were enough to send Clinton into "imaginary discussions" with the also-politically-active Eleanor Roosevelt;[123] from the time she came to Washington, she also found refuge in a prayer group of The Fellowship that featured many wives of conservative Washington figures.[124][125] Triggered in part by the death of her father in April 1993, she publicly sought to find a synthesis of Methodist teachings, liberal religious political philosophy, and Tikkun editor Michael Lerner's "politics of meaning" to overcome what she saw as America's "sleeping sickness of the soul" and that would lead to a willingness "to remold society by redefining what it means to be a human being in the twentieth century, moving into a new millennium."[126][127] Other segments of the public focused on her appearance, which had evolved over time from inattention to fashion during her days in Arkansas,[128] to a popular site in the early days of the World Wide Web devoted to showing her many different, and much analyzed, hairstyles as First Lady,[129][130] to an appearance on the cover of Vogue magazine in 1998.[131]
Health care and other policy initiatives
Hillary Rodham Clinton's Gallup Poll favorable/unfavorable ratings, 1992–1996.[132]In 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head and be the chairwoman of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform.[133] The recommendation of the task force became known as the Clinton health care plan, a comprehensive proposal that would require employers to provide health coverage to their employees through individual health maintenance organizations. The plan was quickly derided as "Hillarycare" by its opponents; some protesters against it became vitriolic, and during a July 1994 bus tour to rally support for the plan, she was forced to wear a bulletproof vest at times.[134][135] The plan did not receive enough support for a floor vote in either the House or the Senate, although both chambers were controlled by Democrats, and proposal was abandoned in September 1994.[134] Clinton later acknowledged in her book, Living History, that her political inexperience partly contributed to the defeat, but mentioned that many other factors were also responsible. The First Lady's approval ratings, which had generally been in the high-50s percent range during her first year, fell to 44 percent in April 1994 and 35 percent by September 1994.[136] Republicans made the Clinton health care plan a major campaign issue of the 1994 midterm elections,[137] which saw a net Republican gain of fifty-three seats in the House election and seven in the Senate election, winning control of both; many analysts and pollsters found the plan to be a major factor in the Democrats' defeat, especially among independent voters.[138] Opponents of universal health care would continue to use "Hillarycare" as a pejorative label for similar plans by others.[139]
Clinton reads to a child during a school visitAlong with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997,[140][141][142][143] a federal effort that provided state support for children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage, and conducted outreach efforts on behalf of enrolling children in the program once it became law.[143] She promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses and encouraged older women to seek a mammogram to detect breast cancer, with coverage provided by Medicare.[144] She successfully sought to increase research funding for prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.[47] The First Lady worked to investigate reports of an illness that affected veterans of the Gulf War, which became known as the Gulf War syndrome.[47] Together with Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped create the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.[47] In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady.[47][145] In 1999, she was instrumental in passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care.[145] As First Lady, Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences, including ones on Child Care (1997),[146] on Early Childhood Development and Learning (1997),[147] and on Children and Adolescents (2000).[148] She also hosted the first-ever White House Conference on Teenagers (2000)[149] and the first-ever White House Conference on Philanthropy (1999).[150]
Hillary Clinton traveled to 79 countries during this time,[151] breaking the mark for most-traveled First Lady held by Pat Nixon.[152] In a September 1995 speech before the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, Clinton argued very forcefully against practices that abused women around the world and in the People's Republic of China itself,[153] declaring "that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights"[153] and resisting Chinese pressure to soften her remarks.[151] She was one of the most prominent international figures during the late 1990s to speak out against the treatment of Afghan women by the Islamist fundamentalist Taliban.[154][155] She helped create Vital Voices, an international initiative sponsored by the United States to promote the participation of women in the political processes of their countries.[156]
Source: Wikipedia
Why she has many more paragraphs in her curricular vitae...
