Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/24680
Once Born became successful, she helped other women lawyers succeed. ROOKSLEY BORN WAS RAISED in San Francisco by a father who headed the Public Welfare Department for 35 years and a moth- er who was a high school English teacher and later vice principal. “They believed that we all had a responsibility to contribute to our society, and particularly those of us who were lucky enough to get a good education and have supportive par- ents,” she told Ms. B gratitude for her due diligence, instead responded to her questions as if she were the enemy of the boom they were credited for having created. Soon, a full-court press was on to stop Born from asking more questions. When she distributed the concept release, she was “viciously attacked” at fi- nancial industry conferences, Daniel Waldman, the CFTC’s general counsel, told writer Rick Schmitt in Stanford Magazine. “[Conference participants] would just be stomping their feet and pounding the tables.” Soon Congress was brought into the campaign to shoot the messenger. A letter to congressional leaders was signed by Rubin, Greenspan and Levitt which, as TheWashington Post reported, asked Congress to immediately pass legislation imposing a moratorium on the derivatives study launched by Born in order to protect the derivatives market from “unnecessary and po- tentially damaging legal uncertainty” that might send users offshore with their business. “During a congressional conference committee meeting on an appropri- ations bill, an amendment was added preventing the commission from tak- ing any action on over-the-counter derivatives for six months,” Born told Washington Lawyer. “This occurred within a month after Long-Term Capital Management’s collapse!” Lawrence Summers, who would take over from Rubin as the head of Treasury the following year, had presented the case for a see-no-evil policy be- fore the Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30, 1998: “In our view,” he said, “the [concept] release has cast the shadow of regulatory uncertainty over an otherwise thriving market.” Summers insisted that the “so- phisticated financial institutions” who were party to derivatives contracts were “eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insol- vencies,” and that there would “seem to be little scope for market manipulation.” How hollow those assurances sound a decade later when Summers, born again as the top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, helped draft a proposal to Congress calling for the regulation of those derivatives because there had been so much market “manipulation” by financial institutions. After the moratorium legislation was passed, Born chose not to seek a new term at the CFTC and returned to her law practice (until her formal retire- ment in 2003). TheWall Street Journal’s Schroeder had opined that Born had “hobbled her cause” by exhibiting “political tone-deafness in resisting intense pressure” while pursuing new derivatives regulation. But she was unapologetic, noting, “Yes, I’ve caused myself a lot of grief, but that’s what a life acting on principle is all about.” 36 | FALL 2009 Discouraged by a counselor in her desire to become a doctor, she ma- jored in English literature at Stan- ford. But when it came to grad school, she felt armed by a “ferocious sense of injustice,” and entered Stan- ford Law School as one of just 10 women in a class of 165. “She was off the charts,” classmate Pamela Ann Rymer, now a federal appeals court judge, told Stanford Magazine. “She is not quiet but she is a very unpretentious kind of person, just plainly and obviously with a bril- liant mind.” Only 3 percent of the country’s lawyers at that time in the 1960s were women, and although Born, as the first woman president of the Stanford Law Review and top of her class, was highly qualified to clerk for a U.S. Supreme Court justice, she ended up instead working for Appellate Judge Henry Edgerton, a feminist and civil libertarian in Washington, D.C. Af- ter graduation, she accepted an offer from the Arnold & Porter firm, both because it had defended politically unpopular clients, including some persecuted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and also because there was a woman partner at the firm. Born, who had two children, made partner even while working part time, a rare ac- commodation in those days. At Arnold & Porter, her unwavering commitment to women and girls was nurtured. Like many trailblazing pro- www.feminist.org ERIKA LARSEN/REDUX