— Ch. 1 · Oklahoma Roots And Family Struggle —
Elizabeth Warren.
~8 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
Elizabeth Ann Herring was born in Oklahoma City on the 22nd of June 1949. Her family lived near the ragged edge of the middle class during her childhood years. Pauline Louise Reed worked as a homemaker while Donald Jones Herring served as a U.S. Army flight instructor during World War II. The family faced severe financial hardship when Elizabeth turned twelve and her father suffered a heart attack. Medical bills piled up alongside a significant pay cut that left him unable to perform his previous sales job at Montgomery Ward. He eventually took work as a maintenance man for an apartment building to keep food on the table. The family car was repossessed because they could not make loan payments. Her mother found employment in the catalog-order department at Sears to help stabilize household finances. Elizabeth herself began waiting tables at her aunt's restaurant by age thirteen. She attended Northwest Classen High School where she became a star member of the debate team. The young student won the state high school debating championship before earning a scholarship to George Washington University at sixteen.
Bankruptcy Research And Academic Rise
Warren earned a Bachelor of Science degree in speech pathology and audiology from the University of Houston in 1970. She taught children with disabilities for one year before enrolling at Rutgers Law School. Her Juris Doctor arrived in 1976 after passing the bar examination shortly thereafter. Warren joined the faculty at Rutgers University Newark School of Law starting in 1977. She moved to the University of Houston Law Center in 1978 where she became associate dean in 1980. Tenure came two years later in 1981. She served as visiting associate professor at the University of Texas School of Law during 1981 before returning as full professor from 1983 through 1987. Her earliest academic work focused on bankruptcy law and commercial regulations. One article published in 1980 in the Notre Dame Law Review argued that public utilities were over-regulated. Warren soon shifted toward on-the-ground research into how people respond to laws. She analyzed court records while interviewing judges, lawyers, and debtors throughout her career. Teresa A. Sullivan and Jay Westbrook worked alongside her on this research. The trio published their findings in the book As We Forgive Our Debtors in 1989. Warren began believing most people filing for bankruptcy abused the system but concluded such abuse was actually rare. She described the way the research challenged her fundamental beliefs as worse than disillusionment. In 2004 she published an article in the Washington University Law Review arguing that correlating middle-class struggles with over-consumption was a fallacy.