Background

Susan Rachel Estrich was born on December 16, 1952 in Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. She is a daughter of Irving Abraham Estrich, an attorney, and Helen Roslyn Estrich, a medical office manager. Susan grew up in Marblehead on the Massachusetts North Shore.

Education

Susan Rachel Estrich attended Dr Samuel C Eveleth School. In 1971 Estrich received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College. In 1977 she gained a Doctor of Jurisprudence from Harvard Law School.

Career

After graduating from Harvard Law School, Susan Rachel Estrich went on to serve as a law clerk, first for the Honorable J. Skelly Wright in the United States Court of Appeals (1977-1978), and later for the Honorable John Paul Stevens, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (1978-1979). She then came to the attention of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, who was then chair of the committee. This interaction led Estrich to involvement with politics on the presidential scale.

Kennedy hired Estrich to assist in his 1980 challenge to then-President Jimmy Carter. After conducting field work in several slates, Estrich launched a powerful negotiation on Kennedy’s behalf for a more liberal Democratic platform. Following her first stint in the national political arena, Estrich accepted a position as a professor of law at Harvard University. After four years she earned the distinction of becoming one of the youngest tenured professors in the history of Harvard, not to mention one of the few tenured women faculty members ever. She was thirty-two at the time.

In 1984, recognizing Estrich’s intelligence, fortitude, and diplomacy, Congressional Representative Geraldine Ferraro appointed her executive director of the Democratic National Platform Committee, giving Estrich the chance to continue the work she had done for Kennedy. In this position, she was in charge of coordinating three major campaigns and organizing hundreds of committee members, a task she completed with notable proficiency. When Ferraro joined Walter Mondale as his running mate for the 1984 presidential bid, Estrich became their senior policy advisor and took leave from Harvard for the campaign trail.

It was during this campaign that Estrich met Marty Kaplan, who was then working as a speech writer for Mondale. They married in 1986 and have since had two children in addition to juggling busy dual careers. When Kaplan became a Disney Studios executive, in order to be with him in Los Angeles, Estrich took a two-year leave from Harvard to work in the corporate law firm of Tuttle & Taylor. Unfortunately, this situation did not suit Estrich’s lively character, and rather than turn to criminal law practice she returned to Harvard and began a long-distance marriage with Kaplan. However, in 1990, Estrich began teaching law and political science – her areas of specialization are criminal law, gender discrimination, and election law – at the University of Southern California, where Kaplan was named associate dean of the Annenberg School of Communication.

Estrich is perhaps best known for her work on Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign. What began in 1987 as a volunteer position writing speeches and working on fundraising with John Sasso, Dukakis’s campaign manager, turned into a fulltime paid position as deputy campaign manager. Estrich, who had already met and worked with Dukakis in 1981 and 1983, became instrumental in the public presentation of the campaign’s messages.

When Sasso was asked to resign in September of 1987, Estrich took his place, becoming the first woman to manage a presidential campaign. Trusting Estrich to rally campaign forces with her determinism and her leadership skills, Dukakis gave her full power in organizing the campaign. Estrich received high praise for her work, not the least of which was leading Dukakis to a victory in his bid for the Democratic nomination and an early lead in his challenge against Vice President George Bush. When Bush began to overtake Dukakis in the polls, however, Sasso was reinstated as vice chairman, and Estrich’s involvement was restricted to the organizational and financial responsibilities of running the campaign.

In conjunction with her political activities, Estrich has continued her scholarly work, both teaching and pub-lishing. Her writings focus on the impact of social and cultural assumptions on political and legal policy. While at Harvard, Eslrich’s areas of expertise included criminal law and sex discrimination.

In 1990 she was appointed Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School. From 1992 to 1993 Susan was a commentator for Fox News "Front Page". From 1992 to 1997 Estrich was a talk show host at KABC Radio. From 1994 to 1995 she served as a legal commentator at O.J. Simpson Trial, NBC News.

Achievements

• Susan Rachel Estrich has been called one of the most influential public intellectuals of the century. The first woman ever to run a presidential campaign, she was also the first female president of the Harvard Law Review and the youngest woman to be tenured at Harvard Law School. Her book Sex and Power became a national bestseller.

Works

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  • How to Get Into Law School

    (Whether one is a college junior facing the LSATs, a senio...)

    2004
  • Making the Case for Yourself

    (A leading scholar on rape law, and the first woman to run...)

    1998
  • The Case for Hillary Clinton

    (With the Bush administration now in its final years, all ...)

    2005
  • Dangerous Offenders: The Elusive Target of Justice

    (The authors of this major book in criminal jurisprudence ...)

    1985
  • Real Rape

    (Many men believe that they can force women to have sex ag...)

    1987
  • Getting Away With Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System

    (Written with clarity and simplicity, Getting Away with Mu...)

    1998
  • Love of Country: Discovering Confidence in Humanity, Law and Politics

    (Susan Estrich writes with decades of experience as a lawy...)

    2016
  • Sex & Power

    (At the dawn of the 21st century, women in America are ric...)

    2000
  • Susan Estrich: Volume I

    (Susan Estrich is a nationally syndicated political column...)

    2015
  • Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate

    (Until now. With Soulless, political commentator Susan Est...)

    2006

Views

Susan Rachel Estrich is pro-choice, supports the legalization of same-sex marriages, encourages the rights of gay couples to adopt children, believes that sexual orientation should fall under the category of civil rights, and supports the elimination of gender barriers in military service.

Connections

In November 1986, Susan Rachel Estrich married screenwriter, professor and former speechwriter Marty Kaplan, with whom she has a daughter, Isabel, and a son, James. They're divorced.

Father:

Irving Abraham Estrich

Mother:

Helen Roslyn Estrich

ex-spouse:

Martin Kaplan

Daughter:

Isabel Kaplan

Son:

James Kaplan

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2000