One of the most popular United States attorneys general in recent times, Janet Reno (born 1938) was identified as a major figure in the Clinton administration. With 15 years of experience as a state attorney in Florida, Reno sought new frontiers for the Justice Department, which is the most powerful department in the Cabinet in terms of effecting social change.

Janet Reno, the 78th attorney general of the United States and the first woman ever to hold the nation's top law enforcement job, was born on July 21, 1938, in Miami, Florida. The eldest of the four children of journalists Henry and Jane (Wood) Reno, she grew up in a rather unconventional middle-class family in South Dade County. Her father, a Danish immigrant who is reported to have changed his surname from Rasmussen to one he selected from a map of Nevada, was a police reporter for the Miami Herald for 43 years...