Santa Clara University

Leading Ladies

A profile of two Santa Clara Law alumnae who are legislative leaders

By SusanVogel

Zoe Lofgren ’75 recalls that during the Clinton impeachment hearings, “Kenneth Starr, who is around my age, was referred to by the chair as ‘Judge Starr,’ since he had once been a judge. I was referred to as ‘the little lady from California.’” Lofgren was too much of a lady to point out the slight. Today’s “ladies” demonstrate not only the capacity for tact but also powerful abilities in leadership roles. Among them are alumnae of Santa Clara Law who are in positions where they can change the laws that govern individuals, businesses, and governments. As to the manners of certain people...maybe that will come in time.

At Yerba Buena High School in San Jose, Lofgren speaks about the value of public service to students as they prepared to take a trip to Sacramento.

ZOE LOFGREN ’75

It takes an indomitable spirit and abundant energy to be a Democrat in the U.S. Congress these days, and Zoe Lofgren has both. “I’d love to brag about all the bills of mine that have passed,” she says, “but as a member of the minority, my bills don’t get scheduled for hearing.”

Lofgren has represented District 16, spanning San Jose to San Martin, since 1995. She was a legislative assistant to District 16 Congressman Don Edwards from 1970 to 1978. Edwards and Lofgren are the only two to hold this seat since the district was created in 1963.

Lofgren enrolled in law school after being horrified at how badly she had drafted a proposed bill for her boss. “I was a low-level staffer,” she recalls. “We had learned of a widow in her 80’s who had had her widow’s benefits reduced to zero because of an accounting error. I drafted a bill so this wouldn’t happen to others. When legislative counsel took a look at it, I saw how poorly drafted it was. An SCU alumnus, Alan Parker, had been urging me to go to law school, and he literally stood over me while I filled out the application.”

Lofgren was a partner in an immigration law firm from 1978 to 1980 and taught immigration law as an adjunct professor at Santa Clara Law. Meanwhile, with her election in 1979 to the board of the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District, her career in community leadership was beginning. In 1981 she became a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, and in 1994, she was elected to Congress.

Lofgren is very tied to her roots: she was born in San Mateo and attended Palo Alto public schools through high school. She earned her B.A. in political science from Stanford in 1970. (Her son is now studying English at Stanford and her daughter is a law student at Boston University.) She returns home to her district (and to her husband, John Marshall Collins) every week.

In assessing her accomplishments, she often refers to the differences she has made at the local level, such as getting affordable Internet services into the public schools in San Jose or helping drug users get treatment while in jail.

Lofgren discusses the need for a renewed commitment to innovation with Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Kirsch (left), founder, chairman, and CEO of Propel Software Corporation.

Lofgren says she would like to be known for “standing up for people who don’t otherwise have a voice—not only poor people, but average working people, the kind of family I grew up in, where people work hard to raise their kids and don’t have access to power. These are the people making America work,” she says.

Lofgren’s goal for the near future is to become chair of the House Subcommittee on Immigration. With her background in practicing and teaching immigration law, she sees the need for changes. “One much needed change is re-establishing judicial discretion so that judges can make sure that just results occur, especially for immigrant children,” says Lofgren.

Another goal is the passage of the Dream Act, to allow high school-aged immigrant children who are college bound to go to college and earn legalization. Lofgren cites an example of a young man who had a nearly perfect score on the English portion of the SAT and a perfect score on the math portion but was facing deportation. “He came to the U.S. legally on a visa when he was a young child, but his parents didn’t follow through on his immigration documents. He risks being deported to a country he has no memory of and whose language he doesn’t speak. Children should not have to suffer for the mistakes of their parents,” she says.

For her to become chair of the immigration subcommittee requires that the Democrats regain their majority in Congress. In the meantime, Lofgren continues facing the biggest challenge of all, “being in the minority of an institution that is increasingly ‘winner take all’ and dysfunctionally partisan. In the 70s, the practice meant that the minority had to be consulted, but not any more. We end up with monster bills in the middle of the night and no one knows what’s hidden in them.”

Being a woman in Congress is an additional challenge, as shown by the “little lady from California” comment.

Despite these frustrations, Lofgren is heartened when young people, men and women, say that her leadership has encouraged them to pursue public service. “I have had people tell me that I have been a role model in encouraging them to step into public life when they otherwise might have been afraid to,” she says. “This is very satisfying.”

HAE-SUK SUH ’87

All Hae-Suk Suh, a.k.a. Hazel Lee, knew about the U.S. before she entered SCU School of Law in 1985 was what she had learned through her studies of English literature in a master’s degree program at Seoul National University. And considering that Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy didn’t write about the U.S., it was very little.

In Korea, women are not well represented in senior positions. “The discrimination here is more overt than in the U.S.,” says Hae-Suk Suh ’87. “Some people still believe that the law is a job for men.”

Hae-Suk Suh arrived in the U.S. when her husband, Jong Buhm Lee MBA ’89, was transferred from Seoul to Santa Clara. With two young children at home, Suh didn’t get out much. And, having left a job teaching freshman English at Seoul National University, she was restless.

“My husband brought me home an application for SCU’s law school,” she says. She was accepted. The first year at law school was a difficult time; however, after the first year, she did quite well, achieving in one semester a GPA of nearly 4.2.

Though she had no background in law, Suh found the study of law riveting—it provided her an understanding of American culture and way of life much better than could The Mill on the Floss or Tintern Abbey. “Through each case I could learn about American life and the way of thinking,” says Suh. “By the time I finished my first year, I was understanding the philosophy and logic behind each case.”

Suh’s initial thoughts were that she would use her law degree to help Koreans immigrating to the U.S., but as she progressed through law school, she became intrigued with the idea of contributing to her country’s economic growth in the increasingly global economy through international business.

Suh discusses the introduction of the Internet Real-Name System.

Korea had come a long way since her birth in 1953, the year of the armistice ending the war between the communist People’s Republic of Korea in the north and the democratic Republic of Korea in the south. (This north/south division was made after Japan’s defeat in W.W.II ended its 35 year occupation of Korea. Intended to be temporary, it turned over the administration of Korea above the 38th parallel to the USSR, and south of the parallel to the U.S.)

In the intervening years, South Korea’s economy has grown from one comparable to that of the poorer countries of Africa and Asia to the 10th largest economy in the world—a pretty impressive accomplishment for a country not much bigger than the state of Indiana.

After graduating from law school, Suh began her practice as an international lawyer at Baker & McKenzie in San Francisco, where she was an associate in corporate and commercial law while her husband finished his MBA evenings at Santa Clara. (The couple’s work ethic rubbed off on their children: their daughter is a psychiatrist and their son is in medical school.)

Suh (far right) holds up a card expressing wishes for the fast development of Korean info-tech industries during a groundbreaking at Nuritkum Square, the country’s first IT complex building, located in Sangam-dong, Seoul.

When Jong Lee was transferred back to Seoul, Suh stayed in the Bay Area with their two children in order to maintain the opportunities she had at Baker & McKenzie. But after six months of family separation, she decided to take a leave of absence and return to Korea.
There, she joined the law firm Park & Partners as a foreign legal consultant (as she is not licensed in Korea) where she continued working in corporate and commercial law, eventually becoming the head of the international transactions department. In 2001 she left with her colleagues to form a new law firm, Wuhyun Law P.C., specializing in international law. It now employs 25 attorneys.

Lawyers enjoy more prestige in Korea than in the U.S., says Suh. Until recently only about 300 new law graduates passed the bar each year, so bar passage alone was quite an accomplishment. Recently, the pass rate has gone up to about 1,000 a year.

Bar pass rates for women have been gradually increasing, making up about a third of bar passers in 2005, but they are not well represented in senior positions. “The discrimination here is more overt than in the U.S.,” says Suh. “Some people still believe that the law is a job for men.”

Such beliefs have not held Suh back. In 2004, Suh was asked by Korea’s URI party, the current ruling party in the National Assembly (the Republic’s unicameral parliament), to be one of its 24 “proportional” representatives, meaning representatives who the party gets to appoint due to the amount of support it has from the electorate. She is one of 41 women in the 299-member assembly.

As a lawmaker, Suh can finally influence the laws that as a lawyer she simply had to accept. “As a lawyer, I had to advise my clients what the law was but had no ability to change it. Now I can really push to change laws and to pursue good policy.” Korea, says Suh, “has been obsessed with democracy and reform. Now is the time to develop law in other fields.” A member of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology, Information and Telecommunications Committee and the Special Committee on Climate Change, Suh is particularly interested in laws relating to regulation of digital content, the telecommunications industry, biomedical issues, privacy rights, and improving the quality of health care.

Suh stays in touch with Santa Clara Law by hiring at least one intern each summer from the school’s summer abroad program.

SUSAN VOGEL is a frequent contributor to Santa Clara Law.