Barack Obama’s Law Personality:

Harvard Law Review’s first black
president plans a life of public service. His multicultural background
gives him unique perspective.

By Tammerlin Drummond
Times Staff Writer


Barack Obama stares silently at a wall of fading black-and-white
photographs in the muggy second-floor offices of the Harvard Law
Review. He lingers over one row of solemn faces, his predecessors of 40
years ago.

All are men. All are dressed in dark-colored suits and ties. All are white.

It is a sobering moment for Obama, 28, who in February became the
first black to be elected president in the 102-year history of the
prestigious student-run law journal.


The post, considered the highest honor a student can attain at Harvard
Law School, almost always leads to a coveted clerkship with the U.S.
Supreme Court after graduation and a lucrative offer from the law firm
of one’s choice.


Yet Obama, who has gone deep into debt to meet the $25,000-a-year cost
of a Harvard Law School education, has left many in disbelief by
asserting that he wants neither.



"One of the luxuries of going to Harvard Law School is it means you
can take risks in your life," Obama said recently. "You can try to do
things to improve society and still land on your feet. That’s what a
Harvard education should buy-enough confidence and security to pursue
your dreams and give something back."


After graduation next year, Obama says he probably will spend two
years at a corporate law firm, then look for community work. Down the
road, he plans to run for public office.


The son of a Kenyan economist and an American anthropologist, Obama is
a tall man with a quick, boyish smile whose fellow students rib him
about his trademark tattered blue jeans.


"I come from a lot of worlds and I have had the unique opportunity to
move through different circles," Obama said. "I have worked and lived
in poor black communities and I can translate some of their concerns
into words that the larger society can embrace."


His own upbringing is a blending of diverse cultures. Born in Hawaii,
where his parents met in college, Obama was named Barack (blessed in
Arabic) after his father. The elder Obama was among a generation of
young Africans who came to the United States to study engineering,
finance and medicine, skills that could be taken back home to build a
new, strong Africa. In Hawaii, he married Obama’s mother, a white
American from Wichita, Kan.


Two years later, Obama’s parents separated and he moved to a small
village outside Jakarta, Indonesia, with his mother, an anthropologist.
There, he spent his boyhood playing with the sons and daughters of rice
farmers and rickshaw drivers, attending an Indonesian-speaking school,
where he had little contact with Americans.

Every morning at 5, his mother would wake him to take correspondence classes for fear he would forget his English.


It was in Indonesia, Obama said, where he first became aware of abject poverty and despair.


"It left a very strong mark on me living there because you got a real
sense of just how poor folks can get," he said. "You’d have some army
general with 24 cars and if he drove one once then eight servants would
come around and wash it right away. But on the next block, you’d have
children with distended bellies who just couldn’t eat."


After six years in Indonesia, Obama was sent back to the United States
to live with his maternal grandparents in Hawaii in preparation for
college. It was then that he began to correspond with his father, a
senior economist for the Kenyan finance ministry who recounted
intriguing tales of an African heritage that Obama knew little about.


Obama treasured his father’s tales of walking miles to school, using a
machete to hack a path through the elephant grass-the legends and
traditions of the Luo tribe, a proud people who inhabited the shores of
Lake Victoria.


He still carries a passbook that belonged to his grandfather, an
herbalist who was the first family member to leave the small Kenyan
village of Alego, move to the city and don Western clothes.


"He was a cook and he used to have to carry this passbook to work for
the English," Obama recalls. "At the age of 46 it had this description
of him that said, `He’s a colored boy, he’s responsible and he’s a good
cook.’ "


Two generations later, at the most widely respected legal journal in
the country, the grandson of the cook is giving the orders.


Yet some of Obama’s peers question the motives of this second-year law
student. They find it puzzling that despite Obama’s openly progressive
views on social issues, he has also won support from staunch
conservatives. Ironically, he has come under the most criticism from
fellow black students for being too conciliatory toward conservatives
and not choosing more blacks to other top positions on the law review.


"He’s willing to talk to them (the conservatives) and he has a grasp
of where they are coming from, which is something a lot of blacks don’t
have and don’t care to have," said Christine Lee, a second-year law
student who is black. "His election was significant at the time, but
now it’s meaningless because he’s becoming just like all the others (in
the Establishment)."


Although some question what personal goals motivate Obama, his interest in social issues is deeply grounded.


At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama studied international
relations and spent much of his time helping to organize anti-apartheid
protests. In his junior year, he transferred to Columbia University,
"more for what (New York City) had to offer than for the education," he
said.


After graduating, Obama landed a job writing manuals for a New
York-based international trade publication. Once his college loans were
paid off, he took a $13,000-a-year job as director for the Developing
Communities Project, a church-based social action group in Chicago.


There, he and a coalition of ministers set out to improve living
conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued by crime and high
unemployment. Obama helped form a tenants’ rights group in the housing
projects and established a job training program.


"I took a chance and it paid off," he said. "It was probably the best education that I’ve ever had."


After four years, Obama decided it was time to move on. He wanted to
learn how to use the political system to effect social change. He set
his sights on Harvard Law School, where he quickly distinguished
himself as a top student. He was soon chosen through the strength of
his writing and grades to serve as one of 80 student editors on the law
review.


Unlike many peer-review professional journals, the law review is run
solely by students. It is widely considered the major forum for current
legal debate and consequently is watched closely by courts around the
country.


In his second year at law school, Obama decided to run for law review president after a conversation with a black friend.


"I said I was not planning to run and he said, `Yes you are because
that is a door that needs to be kicked down and you can take it down.’ "


It was a marathon selection process, an arcane throwback to the early
days of the review. The students editors deliberated behind closed
doors from 8:30 a.m. until early the next day. The 19 anxious
candidates took turns cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for the
selection committee, whose members emerged with a historic decision.


"Before I could say a word, another black student who was running just
came up and grabbed me and hugged me real hard," Obama recalled. "It
was then that I knew it was more than just about me. It was about us.
And I am walking through a lot of doors that had already been opened by
others."


But few students at the law review were prepared for the deluge of
interview requests for Obama from newspapers, radio and television
stations. Strange letters of congratulations began arriving.


Shortly after the elections, a package turned up at the law review
office with no return address. Obama said he hesitated to open it
because of the spree of recent mail bombings targeted at civil rights
activists nationwide. When the package was finally opened, inside were
two packages of dim sum, with no explanation. Some students made light
of the media invasion, posting a memo titled "The Barack Obama Story, a
Made for TV Movie, Starring Blair Underwood as Barack Obama."


Yet tensions were building. White students grumbled about the
attention paid to Obama’s race. Black students criticized him for not
choosing more blacks for other top positions at the review. Caught in
the cross-fire, Obama, who has a tendency toward understatement,
downplayed his own achievements.


"For every one of me, there are thousands of young black kids with the
same energies, enthusiasm and talent that I have who have not gotten
the opportunity because of crime, drugs and poverty," he said. "I think
my election does symbolize progress but I don’t want people to forget
that there is still a lot of work to be done."


Describing Obama, fellow students and professors point to a
self-confidence tempered by modesty as one of his greatest attributes.


"He’s very unusual, in the sense that other students who might have
something approximating his degree of insight are very intimidating to
other students or inconsiderate and thoughtless," said Laurence Tribe,
a constitutional law professor. "He’s able to build upon what other
students say and see what’s valuable in their comments without
belittling them."


But what truly distinguishes Obama from other bright students at
Harvard Law, Tribe said, is his ability to make sense of complex legal
arguments and translate them into current social concerns. For example,
Tribe said, Obama wrote an insightful research article showing how
contrasting views in the abortion debate are a direct result of
cultural and sociological differences.


As law review president, Obama is the last person to edit student
articles, as well as longer pieces by accomplished legal scholars. The
review publishes eight times a year and receives about 600 free-lance
articles each year.


Referring to his fellow students at the review, whom he edits, he
said: "These are the people who will be running the country in some
form or other when they graduate. If I’m talking to a white
conservative who wants to dismantle the welfare state, he has the
respect to listen to me and I to him. That’s the biggest value of the
Harvard Law Review. Ideas get fleshed out and there is no party line to
follow."


Obama spends 50 to 60 hours each week on law review business. The
full-time volunteer job leaves little time for an additional 12 hours
of class, plus homework. When it comes to choosing between the two, as
it often does, Obama usually misses class.


One of Obama’s most difficult tasks as editor in chief is keeping the peace amid the clashing egos of writers and editors.


"He is very, very diplomatic," said Radhika Rao, 24, a third-year law
student from Lexington, Ind. "He is very outgoing and has a lot of
experience in handling people, which stands him in good stead."


Tina Ulrich, 24, a third-year student, wrote an article for the review
that went through several editors before her final draft landed on
Obama’s desk.


"When he sent it back, it had lots of tiny print all over it and I was
just furious," she said. "My heart just sank. But it was accompanied by
specific examples of how parts could be made better. He wound up
getting an enthusiastic response from a very tired writer."


Outside the review, other blacks at Harvard are skeptical that Obama’s
appointment will change much at the Ivy League institution, where 180
out of 1,601 law students are black.


"While I applaud Obama’s achievement, I guess I am not as hopeful for
what this will mean for other blacks at Harvard," said Derrick Bell,
the school’s first black tenured law professor.


"There is a strange character to this black achievement. When you have
someone that reaches this high level, you find that he is just deemed
exceptional and it does not change society’s view of all of the rest."