National Jurist - February 2009 - (Page 23)

From the classroom to the White House This presidency marks the first time that two constitutional law professors have been elected to the nation’s highest office. Former students and professors of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden reflect on their time in the classroom. hicago attorney Jesse Ruiz has fond memories of his time as a student of Barack Obama at the University of Chicago Law School. He also counts the new president as a friend. In 1994, he took a 10-week seminar for 15 students on “Current Issues in Racism,” taught by Obama, then a senior lecturer at the school. “Although he was By Rebecca Larsen the member of a minority, he was very good at challenging our beliefs and getting us to look at all sides of the question,” said Ruiz, now a member of a law firm. Ruiz graduated in 1995, when Obama ran for the Illinois state senate. “My then girlfriend, now my wife, another friend and I held a fund-raiser for him at my wife’s apartment,” he said. “After he spoke, he very awkwardly asked for donations. We were all fresh out of school. We raised $1,000 for him.” That same year Ruiz got Obama to autograph a copy of Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father.” “I told him I wanted him to do it because he was going to be famous some day,” Ruiz said. “He talked about perhaps running for mayor of Chicago. He had no dreams of being anything as grand as president.” The election of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden marks the first time that two constitutional-law professors have been elected president and vice president of the United States. Only three other constitutional-law professors have gone on to be elected president, according to Jeffrey Rosen, who wrote the piece “Obama: The Teacher President” for Washingtonian.com. They were: William Howard Taft, who was a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati Law School and, after leaving the presidency, taught at Yale Law School and then served as Chief Justice of the United States; Woodrow Wilson, who was a professor of jurisprudence and president of Princeton as well as the first lecturer in constitutional law at New York Law School; and Bill Clinton, who taught constitutional law at the University of Arkansas. The new president was a lecturer at the Chicago law school from 1992 to 1996. He was a senior lecturer from 1996 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004. Several times during his 12 years as a professor in the law school, Obama was invited to join the faculty in a full-time tenuretrack position, but he declined, according to Sarah Galer, news officer for the Chicago law school. Senior lecturers are regarded as professors although they are part-time, she said. His running mate, former Delaware Sen. Biden, only recently took leave from his job as an adjunct law professor at Widener University in Delaware where he began teaching in 1991. (See PHOTO (LEFT) BY JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES; (RIGHT) COURTESY OF OBAMA CAMPAIGN According to some of President Barack Obama’s former associates, he received very high ratings as a teacher at the University of Chicago Law School. February 2009 THE NATIONAL JURIST 23 http://www.Washingtonian.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of National Jurist - February 2009

National Jurist - February 2009 Contents Entertainment: Get Organized! The Firm Report: The Part-Time Lawyer News: Keeping Ethics Intact, New Law Deans, Latest Survey Findings Seattle Law Students Secure Asylum for East African Women Laptops in the Classroom Attorneys Dissect Health Law Law Students Contribute to 2008 Election Process Remembering Professors Obama and Biden Bar Exam Diaries How Well Balanced are Law Students? How to Choose a Summer Program Career Hotline Linguistic Gymnastics Disturbing the Peace

National Jurist - February 2009

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.