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"He is really an empty suit who has acquired an academic pedegree that has yet to be exposed since we have never seen any of his transcripts, SAT scores, etc."

Yes, he was the head of Harvard Law Review and yet as I understand it we don't have any articles he published for the law review. Can you head it up and not actually write any articles for it? Sounds to me like a token head to stick out there while capable students under him did all the writing and real work...

Right. They changed the rules at Harvard in terms of who could selected at the Harvard Law Review shortly before Obama was elected/selected. It was no longer based solely on academic performance and excellence, but rather, on other considerations including race and ethnicity. Obama became the first black head of the Law Review.

First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review By FOX BUTTERFIELD, Special to The New York Times Published: February 6, 1990

BOSTON, Feb. 5— The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School.

The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii.

''The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress,'' Mr. Obama said today in an interview. ''It's encouraging.

''But it's important that stories like mine aren't used to say that everything is O.K. for blacks. You have to remember that for every one of me, there are hundreds or thousands of black students with at least equal talent who don't get a chance,'' he said, alluding to poverty or growing up in a drug environment.

Change in Selection System

Mr. Obama was elected after a meeting of the review's 80 editors that convened Sunday and lasted until early this morning, a participant said.

Until the 1970's the editors were picked on the basis of grades, and the president of the Law Review was the student with the highest academic rank. Among these were Elliot L. Richardson, the former Attorney General, and Irwin Griswold, a dean of the Harvard Law School and Solicitor General under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

That system came under attack in the 1970's and was replaced by a program in which about half the editors are chosen for their grades and the other half are chosen by fellow students after a special writing competition. The new system, disputed when it began, was meant to help insure that minority students became editors of The Law Review.

Harvard, like a number of other top law schools, no longer ranks its law students for any purpose including a guide to recruiters.

The Illegal was “President” of the Harvard Law Review, an elected (by the other student menbers of the Law Review) position much like the captain of a football team. As such it was much more an honorary and political position, rather than a real scholarly working position. The person who did the real scholarly work had a title similar to “Managing Editor” and essentialy did for the Review what a quarterback does for a football team.