Barack Obama - President of the Harvard Law Review

[FrenchieCat]

Published: February 6, 1990

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.
snip

A President's Future

The president of the law review usually goes on to serve as a clerk for a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals for a year, and then as a clerk for an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend two or three years in private law practice and then return to Chicago to re-enter community work, either in politics or in local organizing.

Professors and students at the law school reacted cautiously to Mr. Obama's selection. ''For better or for worse, people will view it as historically significant,'' said Prof. Randall Kennedy, who teaches contracts and race relations law. ''But I hope it won't overwhelm this individual student's achievement.''
snip

Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2DC1631F935A35751C0A966958260

The Review is one of the most cited law reviews in the United States and considered by many to be the most prestigious. It is published monthly from November through June, with the November issue dedicated to covering the previous year's Supreme Court Term. The review has a circulation of about 8,000,<1> and also publishes online. In addition, it publishes the online-only Harvard Law Review Forum, a rolling journal of scholarly responses to the main journal's content.

The Harvard Law Review Association, in conjunction with the Columbia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal, publishes The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, the most widely followed authority for legal citation formats in the United States.

The Harvard Law Review published its first issue on April 15, 1887, and is the oldest operating student-edited law review in the nation. The establishment of this institution was largely due to the support of Louis Brandeis, then a recent Harvard Law School alumnus and Boston attorney who would later go on to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court. The first woman to serve as the Review's president was Democratic political operative Susan Estrich (1978); its first black president was Senator Barack Obama (1991).<2> The recently elected Andrew Crespo (2008) was the first Hispanic president.<3>

Using a competitive process that takes into account first-year grades, an editing exercise, and a written commentary on a court decision, The Harvard Law Review selects between 41 and 43 editors annually from the second-year Law School class, which numbers 560.

Prominent alumni of the Harvard Law Review include Supreme Court Justices Edward Sanford, Felix Frankfurter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Stephen Breyer and Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Charles Hamilton Houston, Alger Hiss, Archibald MacLeish, Secretary of Transportation and Brown v. Board of Education attorney William Coleman, Jr., Judge Richard Posner, Chief Judge Henry Friendly, Chief Judge Michael Boudin, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, former Canadian ambassador Allan Gotlieb, former Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh, former New York State Solicitor General Preeta D. Bansal, University of Texas President William C. Powers, and former Harvard University president Derek Bok.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Law_Review

[democrat2thecore]

1. Ahhh.....Executive experience! Wasn't just the editor.....nt

[FrenchieCat]

3. Did you see the list of alumnis?

That's a list and a half!

[democrat2thecore]

6. You're not kidding. A who's who of political/judicial giants -nt

[flamingdem]

2. But will that win him an election against a POW and a Gun Nut? nt

[FrenchieCat]

4. Ms. Teddy Roosevelt and Mr. Vietnam?

Depend as to whether 8 years of incompetence and lack of judgment is enough.

[flamingdem]

5. nooooo... not a comparison with Roosevelt. Are they capable? nt

[FrenchieCat]

7. Moose = Teddy R = Sarah Failin'

[flamingdem]

10. put Roosevelt and Palin in Google and got this:

Sarah Palin is no Teddy Roosevelt
by Junkyard Dem
Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 06:58:57 PM PDT

Tonight, Senator Sam Brownnoseback declared that Sarah Palin comes from the Teddy Roosevelt wing of the Republican Party. While MSNBC's Tom Brokaw and Keith Olbermann repeated this meme, they saw that this stretching back to Teddy Roosevelt was just that—a stretch.

The picture that the Republican Party is trying paint at the convention is that of two Mavericks of two politicians that would make TR proud. But neither Sarah Palin nor John McCain are reformers. They're more of the same streo-conservatism that we've suffered through for eight years. They only promise one thing: four more years of the failed policies of George W. Bush.

The Republicans are tossing around the B.S. when compare themselves, and especially Sarah Palin, to Teddy Roosevelt. It is an insult to the memory of one of our greatest Presidents and greatest Americans. When you look at TR's story and you'll notice that he's nothing like Palin.

* Junkyard Dem's diary

[FrenchieCat]

11. Palin = Ashcroft, not Teddy Roosevelt!

[Doremus]

27. Palin = Ashcroft without a law degree eom

[anakie]

8. and somehow the right

attempt to turn this into an insult. They are scared of educated people.


Peace

[Cha]

9. Rec'd!~ Just WOW!

It's good to bring up Obama's history because it tends to get lost in the shuffle.

I heard somebody tonight in the laundrymat saying Obama was just a community organizer and when I interjected that he's been heading his campaign for 18 months..he said, "so what?" and then went on to repeat some more slime.. I stopped right there because I don't debate idiots.

[FrenchieCat]

12. He has done so much more than any of 'em, it ain't even funny.

[Cha]

21. Yes, he has and that's why I got so

incensed when I heard lies being spewed where I do my laundry, the only place in town, coming from the owner of the laundrymat.

He should know better too but as I remember he was for the War on Iraq, too, and we got into it about that back in 2003. He's one of these types that it's all about him and his stupidity.

[krawhitham]

13. President of the Harvard Law Review VS President of the PTA

tough one

[FrenchieCat]

14. I know! Must.ponder.experience

[democracy1st]

15. K & R

[d_b]

16. but hey

did he sell a plane on ebay?

this whole argument about experience is utterly ridiculous.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

17. I went to HLS. Michelle Robinson Obama was a classmate,

and section-mate of mine - Class of 1988. I knew who she was, though I didn't know her personally. To get on to the Harvard Law Review is a prize beyond price. I went through the writing competition. I am a good enough writer to have had more than 50 pieces published, with minimal editing, in internationally circulated journals that report on my avocations of music and High End Audio. I was NOT good enough for the Harvard Law Review, though I spent three years as a staff member on one of Harvard's other law reviews and rose to the position of Line Editor, where I had principal responsibility for editing and cite checking the work of professors. Barack was elected the first African-American Editor-In-Chief of that august journal.

I did not graduate magna cum laude from HLS, as Barack did. I am smart. He is brilliant. To graduate from HLS magna in those days required astonishing consistency and brilliance for three years in a school that graded on a B curve so mushy that it was virtually impossible to get the straight As required for magna over one's course of study. I was a B+ student and finished in the top third of my class. Barack started the September after my May graduation.

I am unemployed and living upon general assistance, food stamps, and the rapidly diminishing grace of others. I have not had a job for more than 2 1/2 years because I am DX'd Aspergers and people hate me on first meeting (without knowing why) because I can't do eye contact, small talk or any "normal" social interactions. But the disability that has prevented me from being able to support myself as an adult let me get to the top of the mountain through sheer determination and braininess when I was a student. I've seen what it takes, and how little it counts in the real world. The Obamas are an incredible couple, not just intelligent, but wise and deeply empathetic and informed. I have seen no better candidate for the presidency in my life, which stretches back to RFK, who was my first non-baseball playing hero.

I hope I live long enough to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden inaugurated as the President and Vice President of this country. I am not optimistic that I will. They will win. I may not last long enough.

Jeez, I love DU! And a big shout out to Frenchie Cat, who seems to post an uncommonly high percentage of the posts I respond to. I love my friends here, even though my posts sink like stones in the high school known as the Lounge. I was never a "cool kid" so fuck the Lounge.

Forgive my stylistic lapses. It is very late here in Minneapolis, and I have imbibed a drink or two.

Grace, good fortune, and an Obama presidency to all DUers tolerant enough to read this.

[TexasObserver]

19. Poignant story. Sorry to hear about your affliction.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

20. TO, the saddest thing about is is that I am mercilessly punished for nothing

more than the way people react to me.

A few years ago I hooked up with a musical duo that needed a professional and accomplished bass guitarist, which I am. A year or so later, the singer told me that when she first met me, she thought I was the coldest and most arrogant person she had ever met in her life. She said it took her months to figure our that I was just extremely shy and different, I didn't bother burdening her with the fact that I had fallen in love with her in the meantime. I am incapable of intimate relationships of any sort because I cannot read or respond to people in that way. To imagine me, imagine Mr Spock or Lt Cmdr Data of ST TOS or ST TNG, respectively. I cannot respond in normal human ways because I do not understand or respond to human emotions in human ways. For a high-functioning Aspie, everything is processed through our logic circuits. because we do not understand emotions unless they are explained to us.

We have compassion, on the grand scale, but no empathy on the person-to-person scale.

[FrenchieCat]

22. Thanks for that post!

And I love you back! :hi:

[Monk06]

18. The Harvard Law Review is one of the toughest next to Philosophical Quarterly

If you fall down on that gig your law career is
over.

[GoesTo11]

23. Big deal. So he was president of a school club.

W was a frat leader and cheerleader at Yale, so is that any less impressive?

[FrenchieCat]

24. I've got what you are looking for:

:sarcasm:

[FrenchieCat]

25. I've got what you are looking for:

:sarcasm:

[GoesTo11]

26. All this shows is Obama is scary and wicked, unlike W

I've never known a president of Harvard Law Review, but I've known people close to that level of achievement.
He is both frighteningly smart and wicked smart!