Martha Coakley previously served as at attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.
Harvard Political Review: At the time you became an attorney, law was a male dominated field. What drove you to pursue law and what challenges did you face as a woman in law school?
Martha Coakley: Interestingly, I grew up watching a lot of Perry Mason on television. And when I attended BU law school we were about a third of the class—this is 1976. Women were starting to go into fields like law more than before, although we were still the minority. I was not in the first wave of women to go to law school, but I also felt that getting a law degree and getting the skills of representing people, of advocating, of writing, of speaking, of trying cases would be skills that would then help me in my career—that would help me to compete. I’d be able to show through competence and hard work that I could accomplish what a male could do. And that has proven to be true. And I have found that my choice of law as a career has helped me, but it has helped me work for things for women that I care about.
HPR: After serving as an attorney you became a district attorney and then attorney general. What did you hope to accomplish in these elected positions that you couldn’t do as an attorney?
MC: Well, what an attorney does is represent people. As someone who worked in private practice, we were hired by and represented in some instances, whether it was a medical malpractice case or a tort litigation or corporate contract dispute, we represented the businesses or people who could come and engage us. I found more and more that I was interested in doing public service work—in representing people or the government in criminal law— for instance, when a crime had been committed making sure that we did the investigation, that we provided for victims rights, and that we got fairness, not just to get convictions but to get the right results. My opportunity as attorney general to serve on the behalf of the people of the Commonwealth meant I could bring lawsuits against the Defense of Marriage Act because it was in the public interest or I could sue the banks on Wall Street because they had been engaged in predatory lending. Those are not opportunities that you get to do in the private sector and it’s something of which I’m very proud in. I had a great deal of satisfaction from being able to use my legal skills on behalf of the people who wouldn’t have had that.
HPR: During your time as attorney general, of which accomplishment are you most proud?
MC: There’s two that I cite and one is that we were able to keep well over 30,000 people in their homes, people who otherwise would have been foreclosed upon as a result of the foreclosure crisis. And the banks, we thought, in many instances, just knee-jerk foreclosing even when it wasn’t the commercially reasonable result. So I’m very proud of that. I think people worked hard and long to seed for their homes. Some foreclosures we couldn’t avoid, some were legitimate. But making sure that we could keep that basic American dream intact for the people was very important to me.
I’m also very proud of our work at the federal level, challenging the Defense of Marriage Act. In Massachusetts, we allowed for the extension of civil rights to people to marry whom they wanted and when the federal government had a different rule being able to say that rule was unfair to people in Massachusetts was very rewarding and particularly because we’re seeing now those rights being enlarged all over the country.
HPR: In the perspective of an attorney general, which issues do you think Massachusetts still has significant room to improve?
MC: I think we will always be on the forefront of consumer protection, particularly as technology changes and we struggle with issues of identity theft and keeping people’s information private, but also making sure that new technology, both for the government and corporations, doesn’t invade people’s privacy. That extends to privacy in healthcare and financial interests, so that’s always going to be on the forefront.
I think that attorneys general have played an important role outside of just consumer protection around technology or challenging Wall Street, around making sure there’s fairness and access in health care, particularly in mental healthcare which is an interest of mine. We’re making sure, and I think this will start to come to the forefront in Massachusetts, that some of the issues of access to education and access to fair criminal justice will also be up front and center for attorneys general. I think as new problems arise, in the economy, for consumers, or civil rights, the attorney general will the voice of people in the Commonwealth
HPR: In the past few years you have ran for both the United States Senate and the Massachusetts governorship. What issues or beliefs drove you to pursue higher office?
MC: Interestingly, when Senator Kennedy died, we were at the beginning, if not the middle of, what I saw the foreclosure crisis driven by predatory lending, predatory practices on wall street. I felt like my experience in that field could be effective voice on the national level. I was successful in the nomination, but as many of your readers may know, national healthcare was also a big issue. And although we had healthcare in Massachusetts, it was very controversial across the country.
In deciding to run for governor, some of those issues, about turning the economy around for everybody, making sure that people had good education, early education, good kindergarten to twelfth grade, two or four years of school if they needed it, because I felt that was also our investment in our future. We have a knowledge economy in Massachusetts, we have an innovation economy, and that we will not be successful unless we maximize all of those opportunities for people who are here.
HPR: Would you change anything about your career path or any of your campaigns?
MC: I feel that I’ve been very lucky both in my private practice, in doing interesting cases, in working as a public attorney, both as an elected district attorney and an attorney general. There are some tweaks certainly we could have made to some of our races, in some of our campaigns, particularly in the senate race. But, I’m really proud of the race we ran for governor. And every race is different and I think you gather that experience. What I’m most proud of is that team of people, particularly young people, who’ve been willing to help me throw my hat in the ring and work for issues that I care about and hope that they will continue to carry on those fights in the not-for-profit sector, in the public sector, and in the private sector.
HPR: In the near feature do you plan on pursuing elected office or a role in the federal government?’
MC: I am very happy being a fellow at Harvard at the Institute of Politics. I’ve only been here for about a month after 16 years of elected office—tough races. I am enjoying very much my interactions with students here and actually thinking about what makes sense next. I am driven by issues, people who need representations, and I will be exploring the best options going forward for me to do work that is interesting and I think makes a difference.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons (featured image) and the Institute of Politics at Harvard University (article image)
This interview has been edited and condensed.