Eleanor Dean Acheson is an American lawyer and government official known for serving as Assistant Attorney General of the United States for the Office of Policy Development during the Clinton administration. She practiced litigation at the Boston firm Ropes & Gray for nearly two decades and later served as vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Amtrak.
Background
Eleanor Dean Acheson was born in 1947. Her father, David Campion Acheson, was an American attorney who practiced law for many years in Washington, D.C., and from 1965 until 1967 coordinated law enforcement activity at the Treasury Department. Her mother, Patricia James Castles, worked at the United States Information Agency, the federal agency responsible for overseas information and cultural programs. The couple had three children.
Her family had a long record of public service. Her grandfather served in the State Department during the 1940s and early 1950s, and her grandmother, Alice Acheson, was a painter and a Wellesley College graduate. Alice was the daughter of Louis Stanley, a railroad lawyer, which linked the family to the legal profession on both sides.
Education
Acheson attended Westover School, a girls' school in Middlebury, Connecticut, founded in 1909 by the educator Mary Hillard and the architect Theodate Pope Riddle. Over the following decades the school moved away from its origins as a finishing school for the Protestant elite and developed into a college preparatory institution, becoming one in the 1930s under Hillard's intellectual successor. She graduated from Westover in 1965.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Wellesley College in 1969. Wellesley is a women's liberal arts college in Massachusetts, and it was there that she became a classmate of Hillary Rodham, later Hillary Clinton. Rodham's 1969 commencement address acknowledged Acheson's role in helping secure the student speaker.
Acheson received a Juris Doctor from George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., in 1973. The law school, part of a university in the nation's capital, prepared her for the federal and regional legal practice that followed her graduation.
Career
After graduating from Wellesley, Acheson spent a year working on public policy at the Urban Institute, a Washington research organization focused on social and economic policy. The experience of seeing women lawyers succeed in their work reinforced her decision to attend law school.
From 1973 to 1974 she served as a law clerk to Judge Edward T. Gignoux of the United States District Court for the District of Maine. Her work for Gignoux included several high-profile cases, among them the retrials of the Chicago Seven, the defendants arrested during protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. She was admitted to the Maine bar in 1974 and to the Massachusetts bar in 1975.
Following her clerkship she returned to Boston as an associate at Ropes & Gray, a Boston-based law firm with a large litigation practice. She was the first woman in the firm's litigation group and later became the first woman to be made a partner in that group, a position she reached in 1983. Her practice included federal and state employment and environmental litigation, patent and antitrust cases, and tax, business and civil rights litigation. Her profile also records a partnership with a firm identified as S Eggeuno.
In 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed her Assistant Attorney General of the United States for the Office of Policy Development, a post she held until 2001. The Department of Justice is the federal department responsible for enforcing federal law and representing the government in legal matters. In this role she managed the department's part in the process of selecting judicial nominees for the president and directed its policy office.
After leaving government she became director of public policy and government affairs for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a national civil rights organization. The Task Force asked her to launch a lobbying program, which she undertook from 2007.
In 2007 she became vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. Amtrak was created by the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 and began operating on May 1, 1971, as a quasi-public corporation intended to preserve intercity passenger rail service. In that position she oversaw the company's law department, including its claims division, and supported the board of directors in governing the company. For most of her eighteen years at Amtrak she served as chief legal officer, and she is now a former vice president of the company.
Achievements
She became the first woman in the litigation group at Ropes & Gray and later the first woman to be made a partner in that group, a distinction that reflected her early role in opening the firm's litigation practice to women.
Politics
Acheson was a Democrat, and her public career was closely tied to the Democratic Party during the administration of President Bill Clinton. She volunteered for political campaigns, including fundraising for the 1992 Clinton-Gore presidential campaign, and in 1993 Clinton appointed her Assistant Attorney General of the United States.
The Democratic Party, one of the two major parties in American politics, traces its roots to the early nineteenth century. In the 1990s the party under Clinton emphasized a centrist approach that combined social-policy commitments with market-oriented economic measures, a direction that shaped the administration in which Acheson served.
Her later work with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a national civil rights organization, reflected the civil rights concerns that ran through the wider Democratic coalition of her period.
Connections
Acheson is the daughter of David Campion Acheson and Patricia James Castles. Her father's family history connects her to a notable Washington legal and government milieu, and her parents' careers in law and federal service shaped the public-sector setting in which she grew up.
She is married to Emily C. Hewitt, who later served as chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
At Wellesley College she was a classmate of Hillary Rodham, later Hillary Clinton. After graduating in 1969 the two crossed paths only at occasional alumnae events, and Acheson later served in the Clinton administration.
Father:
David Campion Acheson
American attorney who practiced law for many years in Washington, D.C., and coordinated Treasury law enforcement activity from 1965 to 1967.
Mother:
Patricia James Castles
Worked at the United States Information Agency.
Spouse:
Emily C. Hewitt
Former chief judge of the United States Court of Federal Claims.
References
Eleanor D. Acheson
Encyclopedia article summarizing her education, her legal career at Ropes & Gray, her service as Assistant Attorney General, and her family background.
Another Acheson Enters Public Service
Newspaper article on her appointment as an assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration and her career at Ropes & Gray.
