EFTA01182223.pdf

First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review By FOX BUTTERFIELD overwhelm this individual student's fercut ie The New Yet Tines achievement." BOSTON, Feb. 5— The Harvard Law Mr. Obama was elected after a meet • Review, generally considered the most ing of the review's 80 editors that con- prestigious In the country, elected the vened Sunday and lasted until early first black president in its 104-year his- this morning, a participant said. tory today. The Job is considered the Until the 1970's the editors were highest student position at Harvard picked on the basis of grades, and the Law School. president of the Law Review was the The new president of the Review is student with the highest academic Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate rank. Among these were Elliot L. Rich- of Columbia University who spent four ardson, the former Attorney General. years heading a community develop- and Irwin Griswold. a dean of the Har- ment program for poor blacks on Chi- vard Law School and Solicitor General cago's South Side before enrolling in under Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson law school. His late father, Barack and Richard M. Nixon. Obama, was a finance minister in That system came und:•: attack in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is the 1970's and was replaced by a pro- an American anthropologist now doing gram in which about half the editors fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was are chosen for their grades and the born In Hawaii. other half are chosen by fellow stu- "The fact that I've been elected dents after a special writing competi- shows a lot of progress," Mr. Obama tion. The new system, disputed when it said today in an Interview. "It's en- began, was meant to help insure that couraging. minority students became editors of "But it's important that stories like The Law Review. mine aren't used to say that everything Harvard, like a number of other top is O.K. for blacks. You have to remem- law schools, no longer ranks its law stu- ber that for every one of me. there arc dents for any purpose including a guide hundreds or thousands of black stu- to recruiters. dents with at least equal talent who don't get a chance." he said, alluding to Blacks at Harvard: New High poverty or growing up in a drug envi- Black enrollment at Harvard Law ronment. School, after a dip in the mid-1980's What a Law Review Does has reached a record high this year. said Joyce Curti, the director of admis. Law reviews, which are edited by sions. Of the 1.620 students in the three- students, play a double role at law year school. 12.5 percent this year are schools, providing a chance for stu- blacks, she said. and 14 percent of the dents to improve their legal research 4 a first•year class arc black Nationwide and writing, and at the same time of- ' The**. Vert tort hat POWs enrollment by blacks on undergraduate fering Judges and scholars a forum for Barack Obama was eluted yes- colleges has dropped in recent years new legal arguments. The Harvard terday as president of the Har- Mr. Obama succeeds Peter Yu. a Law Review is generally considered vard Law Review. He is the first first-generation Chinese-American. a. the most widely cited of the student law president of The Law Review, After reviews. • black to hold the position. graduation. Mr Yu plans to serve .as On his goals in his new post. Mr. clerk for Chief Judge Patricia Wald on Obama said: "I personally am inter- the of the United States Court of All. ested in pushing a strong minority per- for a year, and then as a clerk for an as- peals for the Federal Circuit. spective. I'm fairly opinionated about sociate justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Yu said Mr. Obama's election this. But as president of the law review. Mr. Obama said he planned to spend ••was a choice on the merits, but others I have a limited role as only first two or three years in private law prac- may read something into it ." among equals." tice and then return to Chicago to re- enter community work, either in poli- The first female editor of The Har• Therefore, Mr. Obama said, he would yard Law Review was Susan Emrich. concentrate on making the review a ties or in local organising. Professors and students at the law in 1977, who recently resigned as a pro- •'forum for debate," bringing in new fessor at Harvard Law School to take a writers and pushing for livelier. more school reacted cautiously to Mr Obama's selection. "For better or for similar post at the University of South- accessible writing. ern California. Ms. Emrich was C.I111. worse, people will view it as fusion The president of the law review usu- cally significant." said Prof. Randall paten manager for Gov. Michael S ally goes on to serve as a clerk for a Kennedy. who teaches contracts and Dukakis of Massachusetts in his aunt Iudge on the Federal Court of Appeals race relations law But I hope tt won't paign for the Presidency it. EFTA01182223