Saturday, June 28, 2008

OZero

Obama has often invoked his academic credentials as a proxy for quality
in his opinions, including why he is qualified to find certain judicial nominees
unqualified or to criticize some judicial opinions.

I do not dispute that
he had a significant distinction teaching, as the University of Chicago
recognizes
.

But I think most academics expect people claiming to be
academics (or former ones) to have some record of scholarship.

If you
enter "au(obama)" in the Westlaw "Journals and Law Reviews" database, which is
the means to find articles authored by the name in parentheses, you get
nothing.  Zero results; no articles.

Entering "Obama" in a search of
the Social Science Research Network ("SSRN"), a place where most academics place
their published scholarly works, retrieves
zero results
.  Again, no articles/no scholarship.