I suspected something like this when all the flacks pimping his so-called record kept talking about the position, but not what he'd done in it. Truth to tell, though, I didn't count it for much in the first place since at most law schools, the student positions on it from highest to lowest are completely backstopped by the 'real' staff and professors, no school is going to let its law review miss an issue or come out with ate-up content just because the student members aren't getting along with each other or doing their job.
He did make the cut to get on it at all, which is something, I have to admit, although I'm sure the writing which was the basis for his selelction was some high-momentum race-card thing like "Prima Facie Discrimination: Why Can't a Clean, Articulate Brother Get onto Law Review in the Ivy League?" I also have grave reservations about whether many of the silver-spooners in Ivy League law schools even write their own material on the papers that are used to pick the LR, considering the money and professional/family connections most of them have, for that matter, though I have no particular reason to think Obama is a plagiarist. I'm not familiar with Harvard, but my opinion of this particular achievement is also discounted by the fact that the being an LR President is normally a result of election by the other LR students in most places, not an endorsement that you are the "Best" writer of the lot at all, just the most popular. And Obama does have a talent for being popular, if damned little else.
In the interests of full disclosure, I have to say I missed being tapped for LR by a hair myself, though in truth it was a relief at the time. Selection in my school was based on what was essentially a one-page casenote about a recent legal development, and in all honesty I just didn't see anything very earth-shaking in it to write about (Nor was there, really; I won't bore you with the details, but you would be astounded at the level of mundane hiccup that counts as a 'New development' for law school writing assignment purposes). My best bud at the time, who really wanted to get onto LR, tortured some slightly overbroad characterization the Judge had made in the case into 'Possibly misleading staements about the state of the law in other jurisdictions' and ran with that, and did make the cut. I was happy for him and far from unhappy that I would still have a life for the next two years (His wife left him while we were at the bar exam, btw, apparently feeling he had spent 'way too much time on the LR as opposed to her in the intervening two years; my girlfriend went along with me for moral support over the two days of the bar exam, and we're still married today with four kids). I did graduate cum laude, which counts for at least as much as making LR would have, and they print the cum laude on your diploma for everyone to see.
