The Harvard Law Review is, without question, the most important scholarly journal in American law — and in part because it has always been the best run. (I say this as a former top-of-the-masthead officer at a rival publication.) When it wants to publish an article, it gets that article. People have tried to establish peer-reviewed law journals for decades, and none remotely approaches the prestige of the Harvard Law Review.

I have known and worked with a bunch of former Harvard Law Review presidents, and not one of them (a) failed to impress me as being really, really smart, at least, or (b) was remotely the type of person who might win a popularity contest. More often than not, Harvard Law Review presidents were jerks, and the few non-jerks were even more intellectually impressive. I wish I could remember exactly what the HLR presidential selection process entailed, but I don’t. I only know that once upon a time I did know it, and back then I was impressed at how well it had been designed to avoid picking anyone mediocre. Harvard presidents tended to be the most intellectually commanding person in their years, excluding the complete space cadets. The Yale Law Journal, at least in my day, had a completely different tradition. The Yale editor-in-chief was never the most respected person on the editorial board, and the position usually went to a nice person who would handle administrative stuff and leave the scholars alone.

Being president of the Harvard Law Review was a full-time job, and then some. As the #2 person on my lesser law review, and someone who had rarely if ever missed a class voluntarily in my life, I was able to make it to about 70% of my class sessions during my tenure in office, and my study time was limited to 5-6 hours per class. I graduated in the top 10% of my class, but there was no way I could have kept my grades up to the Harvard magna standard. And, unlike Harvard, we did NOT manage to publish all our issues on time.

Leading a bunch of top students at an elite law school is pretty much a cat-herding sort of thing. Every one of your “subordinates” thinks he or she is God’s gift to humanity, and has proven skill in manipulating systems to come out on top. What’s more, it’s a rare Harvard Law Review board that does not contain dozens of people who make substantial contributions to the legal world in the decades after they graduate. These are people whose high opinion of themselves is objectively justified, uniquely so. The Harvard Law Review Board in my cohort included ten future Supreme Court clerks, several future federal judges, a future Fortune 500 CEO, a JD/PhD hired onto the Harvard faculty before graduation, a future Deputy Attorney General of the United States, a couple of future law school deans and maybe university presidents, the future COO of a major real estate empire, the future managing partner of one of the country’s largest and most successful firms . . . and none of them was the president (except that the president was one of the Supreme Court clerks).

There are very few credentials that say as much about a young person’s intellectual ability as being chosen president of the Harvard Law Review.

And even then, once you leave the US and head to Europe, you’re not dealing with predominantly student run legal reviews either. You’re dealing with law journals run by academics.

All that aside, I don’t see how your point adds or detracts anything from my main point that citing the HLR as proof for Mr. President’s intelligence is wrongheaded when you can just point at his entire academic record. He’s a smart man.

Wrong.

You are obviously not a lawyer, since any lawyer knows that the Harvard Law Review is the most prestigious legal journal on the planet.

As to the first point: It doesn’t matter if it’s the most prestigious thing you can do as a Harvard Law student. The question was in regards to using it to prove the intelligence of Obama. I say it’s better to use his track record as a professor than to say he was elected to the head of a student run organization (no matter how prestigious).

Probably need some stats to support your penultimate bit there.

I was president of my high school band, too. That and a nickel would get me five cents.