"At least being a governor, a person learns respect for the role of state government and one gets executive experience. A conlawprof doesn't have to run anything of any significance. It's a one-person show and it's mostly based on observing how other people have manipulated language over the years. I think that's a dangerous background!"
A comment I left in a Facebook thread based on that WaPo titled "Scott Walker gets a crash course in foreign policy," which displays in Facebook with the decidedly different title "The making of Scott Walker, statesman." Upthread, there was discussion of Obama's lack of foreign policy experience and a suggestion that being a conlawprof might have counted for something.
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Con Law...does that mean Confidence Man Law dealing with people challenging others to have courage to gamble and "trust me" no matter how big their lie is?
I was interested in the writer contrasting Scott Walker's ignorance with Gov. Ronald Reagan whom he declares had spent 20 years "thinking about" foreign policy issues.
So it was just another NYC idiot supposing hinterland rubes from dairy farm states only think about local issues.
Obama wasn't a conlaw prof. His classes were on race law and organizing.
"As a constitutional law professor myself, I'd like to say that being a constitutional law professor is likely to lead you to disrespect the layperson's belief that there are any significant constitutional limits on presidential power . . . It's a one-person show and it's mostly based on observing how other people have manipulated language over the years. I think that's a dangerous background!"
It is most refreshing to see the low opinion you have of (part of) your own field.
But I wouldn't insult you by implying that Barry was a conlawprof.
Of course, people don't need con law background to be Progressive cons.
Studying con law is mind reading.
Yes, before BHO took office it never occurred to the non-con-lawprof Presidents (and their governments) to come up legal reasoning that would justify actions that seemed (and sometimes were) unlimited, when judged by some laypeople's reading of the constitution. According to legal-historian-Althouse's warped understanding, there is a correlation between con-law prof Presidents and the push for expansive executive power.
Even ignoring history and relying only on theory, Althouse tells us there is an advantage to a non-con lawprof governor like Walker because he knows his limits. Such as when he sees his voter suppression laws being reviewed by the USSC. But, a con lawprof like BHO doesn't know that there is a USSC or other courts that can review and impact his actions. Althouse is so proud of this analysis that she reprinted it here for all to see.
Ha.
as when he sees his voter suppression laws
Has there been a surplus of straw lately that accounts for it being the main bulk of the Leftwing diet?
Kudos Althouse!
Darleen,
Call it whatever you want: Walker learned (as only a layperson can, according to Althouse) that there are some significant constitutional limits on executive power.
"I changed the law"
He has to be the worst adjunct...EVAH!
Walker disappointed once again.
He supports Ethanol in our gasoline, which is just dumb. It only makes sense if you're trying to pander to farmers who want their farming subsidized.
I was disappointed in almost all of the presidential candidates and their answers. They almost all pandered to the farmers and promised to keep our gasoline 10% ethanol.
Stupid.
Wow ! Obama was a "Constitutional Law Professor !"
I don't remember it that way. He was a "lecturer" on race, as I recall.
Walker disappointed once again.
He supports Ethanol in our gasoline, which is just dumb. It only makes sense if you're trying to pander to farmers who want their farming subsidized.
It's still early in the election season. Walker will very likely flip-flop back to his previous stance again.
Obama taught a canned course on one Constitutional Amendment, IIRC. That sort of "professorship" could have been performed by any TA or escaped lab chimp.
That's a great observation, but, as with so much of his resume, the reality is Obama was never really a Con Law professor. That was a campaign whopper that the media never bothered to correct.
Really? A "Con Law Prof" voted for a Usurper? NOT ONE stood up and informed the public that Hussein Obama is not a natural born Citizen (because the whole lot of them are cowards, not wanting to risk their cushy life as intelligista in the Ivory Tower of Academia). Surely some must have known.
What can those lids at UW be learning?
Just last week the "law prof" implied that Hussein Obama was a "citizen from birth", implying that that was the requirement, and not realizing that citizens from birth could be naturalized at birth by 8 US Code 1401 (1).
"Con Law Prof"? You should be ashamed.
There are some aspects of the presidency that a person has to learn on the job. How many people outside of the State Department actually have foreign policy experience? I don't count college professors as having real experience, either. Some governors get foreign exposure when recruiting foreign companies to locate factories in their states and the like, but that's not foreign policy.
The Constitution is the ultimate cause of everything that is wrong in America. Since the beginning, courts, presidents and congresses have twisted the plain meaning of the text to further their own selfish interests. John Marshall is an exemplar with his usurpation of the "right" to judge the constitutionality of laws.
1789 marks the end of representative democracy in America. If you want America back, you have to return to the Articles of Confederation.
Sykes 1--I thought the U.S. was a democratic republic. Where does the representative democracy come in? I've been pledging my allegiance to "the republic for which it (the flag) stands."
Obama graduated college and law school, which demonstrates an interest in acquiring knowledge.
Walker is a dropout. He has for 30 years demonstrated an indifference to acquired knowledge.
Some voters will question the wisdom of voting for a 50-year old who needs a crash course to be able to identify Russia and China on a map.
Professor Althouse, I have a question for you.
The premise for my question is my assumption that you -- as a long tenured full professor of law, indeed a long-time holder of an endowed chair at her state's premiere law school, among the country's top handful of law schools overall and in the top ranks of state sponsored law schools, with her own long CV containing scholarly works read and cited by legal academics and practitioners and judges -- have at least semi-regularly kept up with others in your field.
Moreover, you were teaching contemporaneously with him, not more than 150 miles away from the University of Chicago.
Let's set aside anything you might have heard about Barack Obama in the political context of him being a Chicago-machine Illinois state senator and failed Democratic primary candidate for Congress.
As of, say, year-end 2003: Had you ever heard or read a single peep about Barack Obama as a teacher (defined at its broadest) of constitutional law?
My belief is that as of that date, which was pretty close to the end of his tenure as whatever you want to call him at U. Chicago Law, Barack Obama had not left even a footprint in the sands of American jurisprudence, as either taught or practiced.
We know that the sum total of his scholarly publications, either as a student or teacher of law, was a single unsigned and unattributed student casenote written for the Harvard Law Review -- an academic contribution so obscure and trivial that it took months, perhaps even years, for him or his political staff to actually claim credit for it.
I'm thoroughly convinced that Barack Obama is the Paris Hilton of American politics. He's famous for one thing: Being famous. In her case, she got famous as the first cute millionaire heiress with a famous name to make a sex tape; in his, it's that he gave a great speech at the 2004 DNC and then rode that to become the first black POTUS. I'll grant them both that much accomplishment.
But if he was actually a "constitutional law professor," can we agree that he falls somewhere in the spectrum amongst the least consequential legal educators ever to walk a major law school's campus? Can we agree that other than the credit hours gathered by his handful of 2L and 3L seminar students en route to their expected J.D. degrees, he has had absolutely zero impact on American legal education and jurisprudence and scholarship while he was teaching?
Based on the OP, I assume that the Professor was responding/reacting to an earlier comment trying to claim conlaw "professorship" as accruing to Obama's benefit. I interpret her comment as saying: Even if he were a conlaw prof, that is not a good thing.
raf, I interpreted Prof. Althouse's post just as you did. (And I agree with her.) I knew when I read this post, though, that it would prompt comments, like mine, quibbling yet again about whether Obama was or wasn't a "constitutional law professor."
My question above is not rhetorical, but I hope doesn't seem rude or pushy. I'm just genuinely curious about whether Prof. Althouse -- or anyone else who may indisputably be called a "constitutional law professor" -- may have known of, or about, Barack Obama as a supposed fellow "constitutional law professor" as of year-end 2003.
But I recall that Prof. Althouse has written on this topic many times before, even though she hasn't set up an "Obama as Con Law Prof" tag for it. So if she declines to answer my question, she has good grounds.
Still, this is such a huge part of Obama's thin set of pre-POTUS credentials, I can't help returning to it whenever I contemplate our 45th President's background and skill-sets.
Now, as of 2015, Obama is undoubtedly the most famous quote-unquote "American constitutional law professor" in the world. He surely has been since at least 2008.
But how famous was he as a "constitutional law professor" before, say, the 2004 DNC convention speech?
Other than students who'd attended Chicago Law and the other faculty (broadly defined) and administrators who taught there when Obama did, could we find 100 people who'd ever heard of Barack Obama as a "constitutional law professor"? 300 such people? I'm almost certain we couldn't have found 1000.
And I am as confident as I can be, from outside the legal academic world (but as a product of it), that among genuine "constitutional law professors" anywhere other than Chicago Law, Barack Obama was not on their minds as any sort of consequential or well-regarded "constitutional law professor" at year-end 2003. I think it's impossible to generate that kind of perception outside your own school unless you've published.
Finally, whether Prof. Althouse responds or not, for whatever other few readers who're still following this post, I pose my question in part to help remind or educate you: Even if Barack Obama can claim some thin credential as a "constitutional law professor," our hostess' credentials and experience and impact as exactly that are orders of magnitude more impressive than Obama's. That is objectively indisputable.
FWIW, this was my own take on the general topic as of March 2008, when the Chicago Law top brass conveniently manufactured a fig leaf to counter Obama critics who claimed that he was overstating his credentials.
And indeed, re-reading it now, I think it holds up pretty well, and it cites Prof. Althouse's contemporaneous post, in which she wrote (italics hers):
"I think one ought to be careful about this. If your title was 'lecturer' and you're applying for a job, you shouldn't say 'I was a law professor.' Even though it can be defended as not a lie, you're exaggerating and not being strictly scrupulous about the facts. And Clinton's press release didn't say this was a lie. It put it on a list of 10 'embellishments and misstatements.' It's fair to say it's an embellishment."
Which reminds me, of course, that it was Hillary who first brought this up about Obama. Oh, the memories!
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