I'm going somewhere with this, Part 2

Returning to my previous train of thought, the discussion of Barry Obama's legal scholarship goes forward at Bench Memos.

And what has Obama published on constitutional law or any other legal topic? Although he was president of the Harvard Law Review as a student, in which capacity he no doubt wrote some unsigned notes, a search of the HeinOnline database of law journals turns up exactly nothing credited to Obama in any law review anywhere at any time. This is yet more indication that his status as "lecturer" at Chicago was not a regular faculty appointment, since regular full-time faculty are expected to produce scholarship.

Let me say that again. There appears to be not one single article, published talk, book review, or comment of any kind, anywhere in the professional legal literature, under Barack Obama's name, notwithstanding an apparent eleven-year teaching career in constitutional law at a top-flight law school.

With this follow-up.

In my thoughts ... on the titanic constitutional-law career of Barack Obama, I presumed that in his time as president of the student-edited Harvard Law Review, he'd have published some unsigned notes, which for that reason don't show up in database records as authored by him. Now I hear from a well-placed source that Obama is remembered by his contemporaries as having written nothing at all for the HLR during his time working on its student editorial staff. That is . . . unusual.

No legal publications, even while president of the Harvard Law Review, yet Obama's constitutional legal scholarship while in grade school is well remembered.

In third grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.' "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07 ]

Scritch, scritch, scritch [me, scratching my head] - has Obama ever demonstrated any written cognitive skills beyond third grade? I don't believe that being named in a footnote counts.

More to come.