A Return to Chicago

TheIrish11 — Thu, 30 Sep 1993 20:05:41 +0000

1993: Barack Obama, graduate of Columbia University in New York and Harvard Law School in Boston, has joined the teaching staff at the University of Chicago Law School. During his time there, he’ll teach courses on due process and equal protection, voting rights, racism and law. Obama gave no indication that his stay would be long-term.

While at the University of Chicago, Mr. Obama will also work at the civil rights litigation firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. The firm also works in neighborhood economic development, an area very familiar to Obama and integral to the future of Chicago. Mr. Obama’s direction seems very clear: in his interview as a 29 year old law student at Harvard, he was pointed in his desire to learn the complexities of Chicago politics. Working at the firm will be a vehicle for these lessons.

The Harvard Law Review

TheIrish11 — Mon, 19 Feb 1990 19:54:17 +0000

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.

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A Return to Chicago

The Harvard Law Review