Susan Appleton's desk is buried under a foot of printed material. Her computer has staked its claim on one corner and peeks out from the sea of paper. Her floor is covered with cardboard boxes overflowing with yet more paper. A narrow path bordered by a foot-high "hedge" of books and papers runs from the office door to her desk.
"I have the distinction of being the only faculty member at the law school cited as a fire hazard by the fire marshal," said Appleton, J.D., professor of law.
But Appleton's messy office belies her meticulous mind. An expert in family law, Appleton's strength lies in her ability to defuse volatile issues such as abortion, adoption, surrogate motherhood and reproductive rights -- all of which are part of family law and in the headlines almost every day.
"Family law touches the intimate part of everyone's life," said Appleton, mother of Seth and Jesse, two teen-age boys. "Marriage, divorce, adoption -- all these are events that occur in many people's experience. If nothing else, everyone was a child once. This personal investment makes the field emotional, but I work hard to bring analysis to the issues. I love to take an explosive issue, bring it to class or present it in my writing, and help people understand what the explosions are about."
While family law touches on some of the most emotional issues in law, Appleton savors the intellectual challenges of the field.
"I've always made it clear to my classes that I like to have debate -- as long as they build on legal analysis -- because debates foster learning," she said. "I think it advances one's understanding of the law to work out some of those difficulties. The interactions and learning from others are the things that make law school exciting."
Appleton often brings in outside experts to further explore different perspectives of legal issues. For example, Diane Merritt, M.D., associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine, originally enrolled in Appleton's seminar on reproductive control. Now she often is a guest lecturer in Appleton's class, providing a medical perspective of the legal issues raised in the seminar. In turn, Appleton has taught both medical students and doctors about legal issues.
"The beauty of the law school connection is that we have Susan Appleton, a nationally recognized expert in reproductive law, providing a whole dimension to our medical understanding of situations that involve patient rights and historical perspectives on reproductive control," Merritt said. "Her expertise has been tremendously welcome at the medical school."
Appleton's love of intellectual controversy/debate showed up early in her choice of college majors. As a Vassar College undergraduate, she majored in philosophy. But Appleton also was influenced by external events. She was going to college at the height of the Black Power movement and protests against the Vietnam War and at the beginning of the women's liberation movement.
"I was an idealistic student of the '60s," said Appleton, who graduated in 1970. "Gloria Steinem was my graduation speaker at Vassar, and I felt that she had just blessed me to go forward and change the world. Law school seemed like a good place to acquire the skills to effect such social change."
Appleton spent a year at New York University's law school, where she met her husband, Bob, who also is a lawyer. When they married and moved to the West Coast, Appleton transferred to the University of California at Berkeley.
Appleton herself has served as a mentor. "It never even occurred to me until I had Susan's class that I could be a law professor," said Laura Dooley, J.D., who graduated from the Washington University School of Law in 1986 and now is a professor of law at Valparaiso (Ind.) University. "That's why it is really important to have women teaching classes."
Appleton said, "I feel very excited about the number of my women students who have their own teaching careers."
As law school graduation loomed, Appleton was attracted to the unique opportunities of clerking for a judge.
"A judicial clerkship seemed like a wonderful choice because it would give me valuable experience in legal research and writing, a chance to participate in the development of the law, as well as time to think a little harder about what it was I really wanted to do when I grew up," Appleton said.
An appealing offer from former CIA Director William Webster, who in 1973 was a judge in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, brought Appleton and her husband back to her hometown -- St. Louis. (Appleton's mother and father graduated from Washington University.)
The clerkship with Webster was another defining moment for Appleton. "Working closely with Judge Webster was an ideal way to begin my career," she said. "I learned lessons, large and small, that still guide me today."
"That was a very intriguing possibility to me," Appleton said. "It had never occurred to me that I could teach then; I thought I had to practice some number of years first. I certainly didn't have any law professors who were as young as I was then (25 at the start of her clerkship)."
Certain aspects of teaching appealed to Appleton at the outset: the intellectual debates, the unraveling of complicated issues, the careful, thoughtful research and writing.
But one part remained unappealing: standing in front of the class. "I could not imagine getting in front of the classroom every day without being a nervous wreck," she said.
Putting that concern aside, Appleton joined the Washington University School of Law faculty in 1975.
"The first day of class was scary," Appleton said. "I remember telling myself I would sit down to teach the whole first semester so that no one could see my knees knocking. But, literally, within a day or two, it became fun and exciting, not that there weren't some bad days. Yet I always felt that anytime I wished something had gone differently, I had the opportunity the very next day in class to set the record straight."
This approach and the students' ability to identify with someone so recently out of law school brought Appleton strong student support. That support showed when members of the tenure committee visited Appleton's class -- one way the school evaluates tenure-track teachers.
"I received notes from the students saying, for example, 'We knew you were going to be visited. We are super-well-prepared today. Please call on us.' They were on my team," Appleton said.
Now that Appleton has been here 20 years, the tenure committee no longer visits her class, but she continues to have a close rapport with her students.
"We all perceived her as being very fair and very respectful of her students," said Monica Allen, J.D., who graduated in 1992. "I felt like she never thrust her ideas on anyone in the classroom; she listened to everyone's perspective." Allen, who works in St. Louis at the Federal Reserve, took three classes from Appleton: "Family Law," "Advanced Family Law Seminar" and "Conflicts of Law."
"In small groups, especially, we would present papers, and it was a revelation to me that she treated everyone, students and professors, exactly the same," Allen said.
Appleton's attention to detail also leads to successes for her students. Allen entered a national family law drafting contest at Appleton's suggestion and won third prize. Anne Goodwin, J.D., another of Appleton's former students, received second place the same year. Appleton has had at least three other students win national drafting contests over the years.
"She reviewed our first drafts so meticulously that we really had an opportunity to create something good because we got great feedback," Allen said. "She took what we did seriously, and it resulted in a higher quality product."
"I remain intensely interested in efforts by the government to interfere with intimate aspects of an individual's life that are none of its business," Appleton said. "As constitutional law has developed, unfortunately, government has more power to do that in cases of poor women."
Appleton's most recent project is an examination of the constitutionality of welfare proposals recently debated in Congress. Those measures include limiting welfare payments even when another child is born, the so-called family-cap proposal. In her paper, Appleton examines a fairly new standard of "undue burden" to challenge the constitutionality of the proposals. Her article was published this month in the Vanderbilt Law Review.
Despite her '60s background and her desire to effect change, Appleton shies from public activism. She prefers to work more behind the scenes, such as through the American Law Institute (ALI), a national organization of about 3,000 leading attorneys, judges and law professors that drafts influential "restatements" of the law, model codes and other law-reform proposals. Legal reforms suggested by the ALI often are adopted by the nation's courts and legislatures. Appleton was elected to the ALI Council in 1994, serving alongside her two mentors, Webster and Kay.
"There have been a number of times I've been asked to speak at pro-choice rallies -- even here on campus -- but I decline because, while I never hide the fact that I am a supporter of reproductive choice and my students know that, taking that position in the class is very different from being publicly active. I want to remain credible as a teacher with whom students feel comfortable sharing their views," she said.
-- Debby Aronson
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