Linda Hirshman, '69: From Law Practice and Teaching to the New York Times Bestsellers List
Uniquely qualified to chronicle the legal, social, and political developments that shape American society, Linda Hirshman, ’69, is a renowned leader in the legal world. As an attorney, she helped create groundbreaking law, including a momentous Supreme Court decision. As a college and law school teacher, she won awards for her ability to develop and engagingly communicate important new ideas. With a doctorate in philosophy, she discerns the deeper patterns that others might miss.
Her 2015 book, Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World, won critical praise and a place on bestseller lists at the New York Times and Washington Post. “Carefully researched and enjoyably written,” said the Wall Street Journal, while Linda Greenhouse of the Times commented “For anyone interested in the court, women’s history, or both, the story of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg . . . is irresistible.” National Public Radio named Sisters in Law as one of its “great reads” for 2015.
Hirshman’s 2012 book, Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution, earned similar recognition. “Her analysis of what makes social movements succeed is always thoughtful and sometimes profound,” a BusinessWeek reviewer enthused. “The result is always entertaining and frequently exhilarating.”
Victory didn’t just report what had already happened; it also accurately forecast what would come next, including the sweeping public and judicial affirmation of marriage as a right for same-sex couples. Hirshman is very good at seeing the future. In 2015, before the sudden death of Antonin Scalia, she wrote a Washington Post op-ed contemplating the likelihood that the Supreme Court would lose one of its justices, and she accurately foresaw the political dynamics that occurred after Scalia’s passing. Her earlier books, including Hard Bargains: The Politics of Sex, also anticipated many of the struggles that would play out on the national stage.
After graduating from the Law School, Hirshman practiced union-side labor law in Chicago for 15 years. She was instrumental in crafting the arguments that led the Supreme Court, in Garcia v. SAMTA, to overturn its previous ruling and extend the Fair Labor Standards Act to the states. She held a professorship at IIT Chicago-Kent School of Law for many years, winning the American Bar Association’s annual award for scholarship in administrative law while she was there. At Northwestern Law School, she became the first visiting professor to win the school’s top teaching award. Earning a PhD in philosophy in the early 1990s, she went on to teach philosophy and women’s studies at Brandeis University until she retired from teaching in 2002.
“While I was writing about Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Sisters in Law, I saw a deep connection between her exemplary life in the law and something that is very admirable about the University of Chicago Law School,” Hirshman says. “The Law School values the role of the lawyer in society, and it teaches you to fulfill that role by seeing connections that others often don’t see and framing new developments in the law in the most effective way. It teaches you how to use whatever you have—your intellectual capabilities, your insight, your societal awareness—in the highest and best ways. You could see the full actualization of those qualities in Ginsburg during her time at the ACLU, as vividly as we have seen it on the Supreme Court. Not many of us possess the acumen and skills of a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but the Law School really expected us to use what we have as fully as we can, and what we learned there helped us do that.”
Hirshman still presents her insights and forecasts regularly in major newspapers and online publications, and on television and radio programs. She’s working on a new book—a novel, this time—and she richly enjoys the time she spends with her children and grandchildren. “I’ve been blessed,” she says, “and I am very grateful.”
Hirshman’s book was published in September and is now available in paperback.