Oral history with Senator Elizabeth Warren now available at Biddle’s Archives & Special Collections.
In a new oral history interview with her colleague Melissa Jacoby, Senator Warren characterizes bankruptcy law as “the ultimate test of everything else you study.” From this foundation, she highlights her journey to establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau which offers a sweeping overview of American history, illuminating the political and economic landscape we navigate today.
Warren’s legal education began with courses in bankruptcy and commercial law under Allan Axelrod at Rutgers University. As a professor, she later adopted a teaching style inspired by the game show Jeopardy!, starting with the answer and working backward. She would pose the question: If bankruptcy laws are designed to solve problems, what problem are we addressing, and do these laws effectively resolve it? She encouraged her students to go into bankruptcy law, arguing, “You’ve got to take bankruptcy, because every company you’re going to sue is going to go bankrupt, or at least threaten to go bankrupt. And so you need to understand how those tools work, so you don’t just roll over and die when they move in that direction.”
In the early 1980s, she initiated a research project with Doug Laycock, Jay Westbrook, and Terry Sullivan to analyze data on bankruptcy filers. Upon completing their studies of Chapter 11 and Chapter 13, Warren and her team uncovered the profound inequities in access to bankruptcy tools. She describes this revelation as a foundational experience that significantly altered her career trajectory.
Warren credits the National College of Bankruptcy Judges and the National Bankruptcy Conference as pivotal influences in her career as a law professor. She collaborated closely with judges to understand the cases they encountered, enabling her to design effective educational programs. During a 1990s NBC meeting, she realized how integral bankruptcy was becoming to corporate and financial institutions. She explains, “Bankruptcy was becoming the answer for the asbestos companies that are all imploding over their liabilities. It’s becoming the answer for Texaco when it can’t post a bond because it had lost this big lawsuit down in Texas.”
In one of the more candid stories from her oral history, Warren recounts a meeting with corporate lawyers who criticized American debtors for falling into bankruptcy due to unpaid medical bills. “These creditors and their fancy pants lawyers had built a fortune off the backs of these people, and just a little forgiveness at the edge, just for the people who have tumbled head over heels in debt, you know?” she says of her reaction.
The financial crisis of 2008 solidified Warren’s role in large-scale policy change. She empathizes with Americans who were outraged by the government’s bailout of large financial institutions while ordinary people lacked access to similar economic support. Reflecting on the aftermath, she believes that the failure to incorporate more accountability into the bailout contributed significantly to the political unraveling that followed. “I believe that’s part of what Donald Trump ran on,” she explains, “if not using those words and that example, were very much a thread through it.”
The final section of the oral history details Warren’s efforts in establishing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, enriched with personal anecdotes that highlight why this path felt so crucial to her.
You can access the entire interview between Senator Warren and Melissa Jacoby in the Biddle Archives NBA Oral History page.