{"id":624,"date":"2008-09-10T09:07:27","date_gmt":"2008-09-10T14:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/blog\/sweet-nothings\/obama-president-of-the-harvard-law-review\/"},"modified":"2011-01-01T21:11:04","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T02:11:04","slug":"obama-president-of-the-harvard-law-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/rants\/obama-president-of-the-harvard-law-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama: President of the Harvard Law Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has come up enough times that I thought I should say something about it. Folk like to raise the Obama Harvard Law Review thing to prove scholarly level of intelligence and qualification. Thing is, I don’t think people have to do that. They should point to the fact that he went to Columbia and then went to Harvard and graduated magna cum laude<\/em>. They should point to the fact that he was a teaching fellow (I guess an adjunct professor) in Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School. But what they don’t have to do is say he’s smart and qualified because he was voted president of the Harvard Law Review. Well, here’s why<\/a> (link to Harvard Law Review):<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Harvard Law Review<\/em> is a student-run organization whose primary purpose is to publish a journal of legal scholarship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me really dumb down the comparison: it’s a student run magazine. Okay, yes they’re smart students and yes the content is smart content but being voted student president of the magazine club doesn’t prove how overly abundant smart a person is nor how overly abundant qualified either.<\/p>\n

Student editors make all editorial and organizational decisions and, together with a professional business staff of three, carry out day-to-day operations. A circulation of about 8,000 enables the Review<\/em> to pay all of its own expenses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well that’s a good circulation…definitely better than both of my blogs but it still doesn’t make a person overly abundant smart or qualified. Now I’m not saying Obama isn’t smart or qualified–I think that’s a weak charge to raise against the man–but I am saying that this isn’t the proof people want it to be.<\/p>\n

The review even has a worthy goal that’s to be applauded:<\/p>\n

Aside from serving as an important academic forum for legal scholarship, the Review<\/em> has two other goals. First, the journal is designed to be an effective research tool for practicing lawyers and students of the law. Second, it provides opportunities for Review<\/em> members to develop their own editing and writing skills. Accordingly, each issue contains pieces by student editors as well as outside authors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words it’s a sandbox where students can develop their editing and writing skills.<\/p>\n

Now I am being too hard on the Review–after all, its not so much that its a club but its a club that a person has to prove some worth to get into. You can’t just sign the dotted line and become part of the Harvard Law Review. So what does it take to become a member<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Membership in the Harvard Law Review<\/em> is limited to second- and third-year law students who are selected on the basis of their performance on an annual writing competition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In recent years, the number of students completing the competition has ranged from 200 to 255. Between 41 and 43 students are invited to join the Review<\/em> each year.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay using the harshest numbers: 255 yearly competition completions, 16% make it onto the team.<\/p>\n

Fourteen editors (two from each 1L section) are selected based on a combination of their first-year grades and their competition scores. Twenty editors are selected based solely on their competition scores. The remaining editors are selected on a discretionary basis. Some of these discretionary slots may be used to implement the Review’<\/em>s affirmative action policy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From that group, 14 editors from each 1L section are chosen based on scores and grades. 20 are picked only on test scores. The rest, no one knows what method will be used to pick them but they reserve the right to implement affirmative action.<\/p>\n

If it were me, I don’t think I would use the Harvard Law Review to prove my point. I’d go back to the years of education, the level of performance as a teacher: the man is competent and smart–focus on that over the magazine club.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags: harvard law review<\/a>,obama<\/a>,politics<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has come up enough times that I thought I should say something about it. Folk like to raise the Obama Harvard Law Review thing to prove scholarly level of intelligence and qualification. Thing is, I don’t think people have to do that. They should point to the fact that he went to Columbia and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,46,8],"tags":[232,452],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-n-junk","category-politics","category-rants","tag-obama","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":626,"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}