Marriage and family, law career and First Lady of Arkansas
From the East Coast to Arkansas
During her postgraduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[50] and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.[51] 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.[52] Under the guidance of Chief Counsel John Doar and senior member Bernard Nussbaum,[35] Rodham helped research procedures of impeachment and the historical grounds and standards for impeachment.[52] The committee's work culminated in the resignation of President Richard Nixon in August 1974.[52]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;[53] Wright thought Rodham had the potential to become a future senator or president.[54] Meanwhile, Clinton had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and she continued to demur.[55] However, after failing the District of Columbia bar exam[56] 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".[57] She thus followed Bill Clinton to Arkansas, rather than staying in Washington where career prospects were brighter. Clinton was then 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,[58][59] where Bill Clinton also was. She gave classes in criminal law, where she was considered a rigorous teacher and tough grader, and was the first director of the school's legal aid clinic.[60] 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.[61]
Early Arkansas years
Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977[71] and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.[72] 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.[48] 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."[48] Historian Garry Wills would later describe her as "one of the more important scholar-activists of the last two decades",[73] while conservatives said her theories would usurp traditional parental authority,[74] allow children to file frivolous lawsuits against their parents,[48] and argued that her work was legal "crit" theory run amok.[75]
In 1977, Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund.[33][76] Later that year, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had been the 1976 campaign director of field operations in Indiana)[77] appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation,[78] and she served in that capacity from 1978 until the end of 1981.[79] From mid-1978 to mid-1980,[nb 3] 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.[69]
Following her husband's November 1978 election as Governor of Arkansas, Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for 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
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,[93] but still made more than $200,000 in her final year there.[94] She seldom did trial work,[94] 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.[94] She was also very influential in the appointment of state judges.[94] 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.[95]
From 1982 to 1988, Clinton was on board of directors, sometimes as chair, of the New World Foundation,[96] which funded a variety of New Left interest groups.[97] From 1987 to 1991, she chaired the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession,[98] which addressed gender bias in the law profession and induced the association to adopt measures to combat it.[98] She was twice named by the National Law Journal as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America: in 1988 and in 1991.[99] When Bill Clinton thought about not running again for governor in 1990, Hillary considered running, but private polls were unfavorable and, in the end, he ran and was reelected for the final time.[100]
Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992)[101] and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).[1][102] In addition to her positions with nonprofit organizations, she also held positions on the corporate board of directors of TCBY (1985–1992),[103] Wal-Mart Stores (1986–1992)[104] and Lafarge (1990–1992).[105] TCBY and Wal-Mart were Arkansas-based companies that were also clients of Rose Law.[94][106] 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.[106] 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.[104][106][107]
Bill Clinton presidential campaign of 1992
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