<p>How does graduating magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and being President of the Law Review (THE Law Review, and as we know he was not your usual Law Review President) count as "rather undistinguished"? Sure, every year maybe 10% of the class graduates magna, but only one of them is ever President of the Law Review (and lots of years no one graduates summa, by the way). I suspect lots of Law Review Presidents don't graduate magna, by the way. That's a 60-80 hour/week job that has a tendency to interfere with your studying time, and the presidency of the Harvard Law Review is a strong enough credential as to render grades irrelevant. (There is only one reason he wasn't a Supreme Court clerk, too: He didn't apply. I guarantee it.)</p>
<p>By the way, to put his achievements in further perspective: Thanks to a nasty public fight over affirmative action at the Harvard Law Review in 1980, the New York Times reported that year that no African American was in the top half of the Harvard Law classes of 1980 or 1981. You probably wouldn't need all of your fingers to count the African Americans prior to Obama who finished law school with credentials comparable to his. (Not that there weren't many really smart, great lawyers who were African American, but few went to Harvard or a similar school, and few who did got magna-level grades, and not even a handful had top law review positions. And the ones who did tended to go into academia or seven-figure Wall St. partnerships, not community organizing and politics. One predecessor was William Coleman, Secretary of Transportation under Pres. Ford, who also graduated magna from Harvard and was the first African American Supreme Court clerk.)</p>
<p>During the election, I read interviews about Obama as a law student with former law school classmates and with Larry Tribe, a famous Harvard professor, praising Obama to the sky.</p>
<p>Being President of the Law Review is more political than merit in my experience. Being selected for law review is tough academically, becoming an editor or editor-in-chief is political. When I was on law review, invitations for a writing competition were extended only to those finishing in the top 10% of their first year law school class. The best writers were selected for the law review. Those who wanted to be an editor in their third (final) year of law school could, becoming editor-in-chief (president) went to the best politician who campaigned for the position.
P.S. How does the above poster know that Obama didn't apply for a US Supreme Court clerkship, and what is the relevance anyway?
First & foremost, Obama is a politician--an outstanding politician.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Different law reviews have different traditions. Back in my day, which wasn't exactly Obama's day, but wasn't so long before it, Yale had a tradition of picking relatively weak Editors-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal was almost never the most impressive person on the staff. Harvard was different. Its process was a unique, multi-stage series of cage matches that made it very difficult for someone without serious universal respect to make it far into the process, and its structure gave the President a lot of power. Harvard Law Review Presidents were often egotistical jerks (never the case at Yale), but they were always intellectually impressive.</p></li>
<li><p>I was in that world. I only know of one other Harvard Law Review President from that general time period who didn't clerk for the Supreme Court, and he also chose not to, taking a significant political job after law school. In addition, I shared a phone line with the top African-American law student in the country my year, and I got to speak to lots and lots of famous judges and lawyers who wanted to offer him a job. A Supreme Court Justice made him an offer when we were still 2Ls, and said the following: "When one of us offers a clerkship, the normal protocol is that you accept immediately. But you are in a unique position. You can clerk for any of us you want to, and I shouldn't take that opportunity from you because I got to you first. So I'm not going to let you answer me now. I want you to take three days, talk to your professors, do some research, and decide whether you would rather clerk for me or one of the other Justices." At the time, no one had ever heard of anything similar happening, and this was a generally conservative, anti-affirmative-action jurist. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>The world didn't change enough in the years between this and Obama's law school class for the first African-American Harvard Law Review President not to be the only law student in America assured of a Supreme Court clerkship.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Relevance? Not a lot, really. Obama's career at Harvard was anything but undistinguished. He turned his back on a lot to return to Chicago and grassroots legal work (and Michelle, I guess).</p></li>
<li><p>Corranged said in another post that Nate Silver is a Chicago alum. That will definitely increase the popularity of Chicago!</p></li>
</ol>
<p>How interesting. A world I did not know even existed.</p>
<p>Thanks for the information.</p>
<p>It is interesting that in this long campaign, if there was any discussion of Obama skipping the Supreme Court or a well paying corporate job, I missed it. Yes, passing mentions, but no serious discussion regarding what this tells us about the person. How interesting.</p>
<p>DH was on the editorial board at his (Ivy) law review and a lot of people seemed surprised when he got magna. IIRC, Law Review was a combination of grades and writing sample. Third year positions were based largely on how one did as a second-year on the review. It was intensely political. DH clerked on the Third Circuit and was encouraged to apply for a S.Ct. clerkship following that year, so he did, but did not get one. Those are pretty rarefied opportunities. </p>
<p>Wasn't it Larry Tribe who hired Obama as a first-year, breaking his tradition of never hiring 1Ls?</p>
<p>Agree with Unalove. Suddenly people "get" where S1 is attending school.</p>
<p>"It is interesting that in this long campaign, if there was any discussion of Obama skipping the Supreme Court or a well paying corporate job, I missed it. Yes, passing mentions, but no serious discussion regarding what this tells us about the person. How interesting."</p>
<p>Au contraire, there has been significant mention (IMO) of the fact that as a grad of Harvard Law, when Obama went to Chicago, he could have had his pick of any number of blue-chip firms and made a fortune, but that he deliberately chose to be a community organizer. Wasn't he an intern at Sidley & Austin when he was in Chicago (where he met his wife)? I'm not in the legal field but that's a pretty heavy-hitting firm from what I understand.</p>
<p>I think you're right, newmassdad. The general public doesn't appreciate the extent that Obama was a golden boy who turned down easy riches and power in the Establishment to forge his own path to . . . well, we ALL know where now.</p>
<p>Part of the reason for that is that it wasn't exactly in Obama's interest to present himself that way. I'm sure that one of the things his pollsters told him was that he had problems with elitism, especially among white, working-class Democrats and independents. To say, "I was admitted to the Inner Sanctum, and walked out" isn't inherently a winning story. It also raises the question as to WHY he walked out. It's one thing to respect a guy who built his career from the ground up, but we might be suspicious if we found out that he turned down easy money and real power in order to be humble for a few years. Very few people would make that choice, except maybe for priests.</p>
<p>And, of course, he didn't turn his back on it all completely. He DID take that University of Chicago paycheck, and he married another Harvard Law Grad who was bringing home the big bucks, at least until their children were born. He was on all those boards with William Ayers, a child of privilege. I'm sure the real story isn't as romantic as the one-sentence summary.</p>
<p>Finally, the story requires too much esoteric detail. How many Joe Sixpacks know that Sidley & Austin is the snootiest firm in Chicago, that Obama's summer internship there was intensely competitive to obtain and lavishly compensated? (How many would like Obama more if they knew that?) How many can tell the difference between the Harvad Law Review and the school newspaper? How many can appreciate what it means that the University of Chicago Law School gave Obama the same title it gave Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook, long before he was even a state senator?</p>
<p>Fair point, JHS and newmassdad. I think JHS is right ... "I could have been a rich guy, but I choose to serve YOU" could come across the wrong way. He can just be content in knowing that even though he's making less than the guys at Sidley & Austin, he's doing OK for himself :-)</p>
<p>There must be a story here. I have not heard it though, and would like to. Right now, it seems like a puzzle to me where the pieces do not fit together. I suspect that it will be told now that the election is over. It would make a great Atlantic Monthly piece, for example.</p>
<p>I don't know that the story is anything other than what it is taken at face value, though. Yes, Obama could have easily walked into a cushy six-figure (ultimately seven) figure job with any blue-chip firm anywhere in the country. But he really had a passion and hence turned it down for the comm organizing work. Whether he did it with an eye towards the presidency at one point, who knows?</p>
<p>Obama did work for law firm in Chicago after Harvard in the early 90s. He mostly did counsel work as a writer in civil rights cases. He was a full-time associate for three years, and continued part-time while at UC for a couple more years. He actually won a case before the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals early in his career. </p>
<p>Or the increase in apps had everything to do with the switch to Common App and the marketing blitz and next to nothing to do with Obama. Come on, how many kids even know that he taught there?</p>
<p>^Just because they don’t accept your theory just off the bat does not mean they’re “worse than your wife.”</p>
<p>It’s cliche by now, but correlation does not imply causation! It could be any combination of a myriad of factors that caused the spike in applications.</p>