Law Professors
Professor Obama’s Exam Questions Revealed, But Not Revealing
Posted Aug 1, 2008, 08:16 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Recent law exam questions and model answers written by Barack Obama when he was a professor touch on hot-button issues of the day, but are so even-handed as to be “simultaneously impressive and maddening,” columnist Ruth Marcus writes.
The questions were posted alongside a New York Times article on Obama’s days as a law professor at the University of Chicago. Writing in the Washington Post, Marcus says many of the questions deal with issues Obama could face as president, including gay rights, reproductive freedom and affirmative action.
In one of his answers, Obama says there are "some persuasive arguments" that homosexuality should be covered by the equal protection clause. The question concerns a gay couple who want a child, despite a state law barring them from adopting or paying a surrogate mother.
Other questions concern a segregated city seeking to create an all-black, all-male school; parents who want to clone their comatose daughter; and a president facing a shortage of antibiotics after an anthrax attack.
Marcus says the questions and answers provide no smoking guns for opponents, and little to show where Obama stands on the issues.
Some exam questions do reveal a penchant for witty names, such as “the state of Nirvana” and a new state leader called “Arnold Whatzanager.”
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