Most people know Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) as a progressive liberal Democrat, the quick-witted champion for the middle class and critic of big banks and the ultra wealthy. But what most people do not know is that Warren’s worldview was shaped and refined during a decade in the most unlikely place.
Texas.
Even more surprising, 30 years ago a former colleague of Warren’s said she likely identified herself as a Republican. In the 1980’s Warren moved from New Jersey, where she attended Rutgers, to Texas to teach at the University of Texas School of Law. It was there that her research into bankruptcy policy started an intellectual shift that would eventually lead her to become one of the most prominent liberals in the country.
Warren and colleague Jay Westbrook studied bankruptcy law and policy during an era when Wall Street was booming and the middle class was really beginning to see a decline. Warren and Westbrook found that the federal government was not tracking the patterns of consumer bankruptcy, and concluded that Congress was making policy with little thought of its impact on the American economy. Westbrook stated that this was a real turning point for them:
“You were having this view into people’s lives who were in really desperate trouble… It changed our understanding of what the world is like.”
They decided to do something about it. Together with sociologist Teresa Sullivan, Warren and Westbrook began work on the Consumer Bankruptcy Project, the largest empirical study of bankruptcy to date. They worked diligently from 1982 to 1985, eventually publishing the 1989 book “As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America.” The book detailed that Americans filing for bankruptcy were not largely poor, but middle class, with stable jobs, homes, and families, and that the government was doing very little to protect them. The research changed Warren’s life.
From then on she became more vocal about consumer economic issues, advocating for more regulation for the big banks and more protection for ordinary Americans. In 1987 Warren wrote:
“I cannot claim that bankruptcy, at its heart, is an intellectual construct or that I can reason to a meaningful conclusion by doing nothing more than thinking hard about logical consequences derived from a handful of untested assumptions. I would like to endorse something that requires only library time and yellow legal pads to uncover ideal solutions to legal problems. The trouble is that I can’t do it.”
The fact was that Warren had seen what conservative policies were doing to the American public, and could no longer keep silent about it. By the end of the 1980’s the University of Pennsylvania was knocking at her door with new opportunities, and her time in Texas drew to an end.
Warren left the state a changed person. From an intellectual prodigy interested in economic policy she evolved into an advocate for liberal ideals including regulation for Wall Street and protections for the middle class. In 1995 she was appointed as an advisor to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission, where she attempted to stop legislation made it that harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy. In 2011, the Obama administration created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau based on the principles Warren had first advocated at the University of Texas.
In 2012, to the surprise of many of her friends, she decided to run for Senate. As a Democrat.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Watch Senator Warren in action here:
Feature image via the Texas Tribune
