Ruth Marcus: The Even-handedness in Professor Obama's Law Exams
How would candidate Obama answer professor Obama's exams? During his years teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago, Barack Obama favored take-home tests touching on some of the scorchingly hot-button legal issues of the day: gay rights, reproductive freedom, affirmative action and racial profiling.
These exams, unearthed by The New York Times' resourceful Jodi Kantor, are edgy versions of the classic law school 'issue spotter.' Can a state university's law review expand its affirmative action program to include special treatment for gay students as well as racial minorities? Does a man have any right to stop his ex-wife from using their frozen embryos to try to get pregnant? Can parents whose daughter is in a vegetative state be prohibited from trying to clone her?
To read Obama's exams is to get a glimpse of the supple intelligence he would bring to the presidency and to be impressed by his lawyerly capacity – perhaps even compulsion – to see the other side's argument and mine the weaknesses of his own case.
But it is also a reminder of Obama's essential elusiveness, and how little we understand about how the candidate himself would resolve these thorny problems.
For example, one 2003 question describes the state of 'Nirvana,' where a gay couple, Richard and Michael, want a child. Would Nirvana's laws prohibiting gays from paying surrogate mothers or adopting children, Obama asked, violate the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process?
It's easy to imagine President Obama wrestling with a real-world version of professor Obama's hypothetical. Obama has said that he does not support same-sex marriage. But his exam question involves the same issues that the California Supreme Court addressed in overturning the state's same-sex marriage ban. If the Constitution protects Richard and Michael's effort to have a child, would it similarly protect their right to marry?
In the model answers he provided for students after another exam, Obama refers to 'some persuasive arguments' that homosexuality should be covered by the Equal Protection Clause. How does that square with his opposition to same-sex marriage? Are civil unions a separate-but-equal substitute?
To take a 1997 question, should 'Splitsville,' a city plagued by residential segregation and failing schools, be permitted to create an all-black, all-male career academy, or is the 'Ujamaa School' unlawful discrimination?
Even if constitutional, Obama asked, 'is it good public policy? Put somewhat differently, in light of ... the history of race and gender discrimination in America, is the Ujamaa School a worthy attempt to promote long-term equality, or ... a dangerous betrayal of the American ideal?'...
Read entire article at Washington Post
These exams, unearthed by The New York Times' resourceful Jodi Kantor, are edgy versions of the classic law school 'issue spotter.' Can a state university's law review expand its affirmative action program to include special treatment for gay students as well as racial minorities? Does a man have any right to stop his ex-wife from using their frozen embryos to try to get pregnant? Can parents whose daughter is in a vegetative state be prohibited from trying to clone her?
To read Obama's exams is to get a glimpse of the supple intelligence he would bring to the presidency and to be impressed by his lawyerly capacity – perhaps even compulsion – to see the other side's argument and mine the weaknesses of his own case.
But it is also a reminder of Obama's essential elusiveness, and how little we understand about how the candidate himself would resolve these thorny problems.
For example, one 2003 question describes the state of 'Nirvana,' where a gay couple, Richard and Michael, want a child. Would Nirvana's laws prohibiting gays from paying surrogate mothers or adopting children, Obama asked, violate the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process?
It's easy to imagine President Obama wrestling with a real-world version of professor Obama's hypothetical. Obama has said that he does not support same-sex marriage. But his exam question involves the same issues that the California Supreme Court addressed in overturning the state's same-sex marriage ban. If the Constitution protects Richard and Michael's effort to have a child, would it similarly protect their right to marry?
In the model answers he provided for students after another exam, Obama refers to 'some persuasive arguments' that homosexuality should be covered by the Equal Protection Clause. How does that square with his opposition to same-sex marriage? Are civil unions a separate-but-equal substitute?
To take a 1997 question, should 'Splitsville,' a city plagued by residential segregation and failing schools, be permitted to create an all-black, all-male career academy, or is the 'Ujamaa School' unlawful discrimination?
Even if constitutional, Obama asked, 'is it good public policy? Put somewhat differently, in light of ... the history of race and gender discrimination in America, is the Ujamaa School a worthy attempt to promote long-term equality, or ... a dangerous betrayal of the American ideal?'...