About the author:
Born Judith Susan Blum on October 21, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents, Murray Blum, a dentist, and Ethel Silverman. Her paternal grandfather, Jacob Blum, immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine, while her paternal grandmother, Lena Mininberg, immigrated from Russia. She described her father as "the greatest thing since sliced bread", and her mother as "a meat and potatoes kind of gal."
She attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn before going on to American University in Washington, D.C., where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in government. She then enrolled at the Washington College of Law at American University where she was the only woman in a class of 126 students. She finished her law school education at New York Law School, where she graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1965.