Barack Obama Blog Biography

February 1990: Barack Obama, second year law candidate at Harvard Law School in Boston, Massachusetts, has been elected the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. In this capacity, Obama will serve in a full-time volunteer position as the editor-in-chief of the law review’s staff of seventy-five plus editors (Obama himself was selected to an editor’s post at the conclusion of his first year - editor’s are selected based on grade and a law writing competition).

The news of Obama’s election has garnered attention around the United States for the groundbreaking nature the election of an African-American to lead a Review which has significant influence over the American student and professional law community.

Mr. Obama’s election was helped by his “across the aisle” strategy; his promise to protect the interests, to the best of his ability, of a large block of conservative editors, certainly helped to sway the vote in his direction. One could even say that this effort may be a prophecy for a future life in politics.

Obama has characterized his time at Harvard as a collection of long hours in dark libraries, but is quick to recognize founding American principles such as “We hold these truths to be self-evident” as reason why to learn, teach and defend the law.

Mr. Obama is on course to graduate with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard.