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http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/03/obama200803

One of the clearest-eyed grandees of the Chicago establishment, Newton Minow has long seen something special in Obama. Minow played key roles in the two presidential campaigns of Adlai E. Stevenson, then went on to become John F. Kennedy’s chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, famously pronouncing television programming “a vast wasteland” in 1961, a few months before Obama was born. At 81, sitting in his law office at Sidley Austin, in the Loop, above a stretch of street christened Honorary Newton N. Minow Way, Minow is talking about the young man his daughter Martha, a professor at Harvard Law School, recommended for a summer associate’s job two decades ago. At Minow’s firm Obama fell in love with a young lawyer, Michelle Robinson, who would become his wife.

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/chicago-law/newton-minow/

Thursday, June 11, 2009
New dean at Harvard Law

Harvard Law School named a new dean Thursday, and she has a Chicago connection. She’s the daughter of Newton Minow, the former chair of the Federal Communications Commission, who serves as senior counsel at Sidley Austin.

Martha Minow will become dean on July 1, replacing Elena Kagan, who became U.S. solicitor general earlier this year.

http://stephen-diamond.com/?p=393

Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was Comm Ed’s key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (and Sidley partner Newton Minow, too). It turns out, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also. She was hired there in the late 80s, because of the intervention of her father-in-law Tom Ayers, even though she was (and is) not a member of any state bar.