Better Question: Who Isn’t a Lawyer on Obama’s Transition Team?

Executive Branch

Better Question: Who Isn’t a Lawyer on Obama’s Transition Team?

Posted Nov 5, 2008, 03:10 pm CST

By Martha Neil

President-elect Barack Obama and his VP-elect Joe Biden wasted no time assembling their transition team, which features a number of attorneys. (Graduates of Harvard Law School, Obama's alma mater, also proliferate.)

Among the lawyers on the list, Valerie Jarrett, described by the New York Times as a once-unhappy attorney who found her niche in Chicago municipal government and is now the president and CEO of Habitat Co., will be one of the triumvirate overseeing Obama's new team, reports the Swamp.

The two other members of the top trio are John Podesta, a former Senate staff counsel and chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, and Pete Rouse, Obama's chief of staff in the Senate, according to the article in the Chicago Tribune political blog. Podesta, the New York Times notes in a biography today, is president of the Center for American Progress and a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center.

Other attorneys on the senior staff team include the president-elect's new executive director, Chris Lu; general counsel, Cassandra Butts; and director of public liaison and intergovernmental affairs, Michael Strautman.

Janet Napolitano, the Democratic governor of Arizona and the state's former U.S. attorney, will serve on an advisory board, as will Michael Froman, another Harvard Law grad who now works at Citigroup and formerly worked for the Treasury Department. Other attorneys in the advisory group include but are not limited to Federico Peña, a University of Texas School of Law graduate who served as the secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton.

"Obama's team started mulling transition issues as long ago as April, I'm told, before Obama had the Democratic nomination locked up, but did not want anyone acknowledging their work," states the Lynn Sweet blog post in the Sun-Times, which was published Oct. 27. " 'Barack was emphatic,' a source told me. 'We don't want to get ahead of ourselves.' "

The full list is being widely reported as follows:

Transition Senior Staff

Chris Lu - Executive Director. Lu is Harvard Law grad recently promoted to be Obama's senate chief of staff. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Dan Pfeiffer - Communications Director

Stephanie Cutter - Chief Spokesperson. Cutter was deputy communications director at President Bill Clinton's White House and is a former associate administrator of communications at the EPA. She is a Georgetown law grad. (SourceWatch)

Cassandra Butts - General Counsel. Butts is a Harvard Law graduate and former top official at the Center for American Progress. (CQ Politics)

Jim Messina - Personnel Director

Patrick Gaspard - Associate Personnel Director

Christine Varney - Personnel Counsel. A Georgetown law grad, Varney is a onetime Federal Trade Commissioner. She heads Hogan & Hartson's Internet law practice group in D.C. (Hogan & Hartson)

Melody Barnes - Co-Director of Agency Review. Before joining the Obama election and transition effort, Barnes was a policy executive at the Center for American Progress and until 2004 was chief counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate judiciary committee. She's a University of Michigan law grad. (Center for American Progress)

Lisa Brown - Co-Director of Agency Review

Phil Schiliro - Director of Congressional Relations. A graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School, Schiliro is chief of staff to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. (TotalCapitol and Politico)

Michael Strautman - Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs. Strautman was Obama's chief counsel and deputy chief of staff in the senate. (CQ Politics)

Katy Kale - Director of Operations

Brad Kiley - Director of Operations

Advisory Board

Carol Browner. A one-time head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Browner is earned her J.D. from the University of Florida. (EPA)

William Daley. The former commerce secretary is a graduate of the John Marshall Law School in Chicago and is brother to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. (Forbes)

Christopher Edley. A Harvard Law grad and one-time Harvard professor, Edley is now dean at U.C. Berkeley's law school. (Berkeley)

Michael Froman. A Harvard Law grad, he now works as a Citigroup executive and formerly worked for the Treasury Department. (New York Times)

Julius Genachowski. Another Harvard Law grad and a major campaign fundraiser, he previously was chief counsel to the Federal Communications Commission. (New York Times)

Donald Gips

Governor Janet Napolitano. President Clinton appointed Napolitano, a University of Virginia law grad, to Arizona's U.S. attorney post. (UVA Lawyer)

Federico Peña. A civil rights lawyer who graduated from the University of Texas School of Law, he served as the mayor of Denver, Colo., as well as the secretary of transportation in the administration of President Bill Clinton. (Washington Post)

Susan Rice

Sonal Shah

Mark Gitenstein. A longtime Biden friend and adviser, Gitenstein is Georgetown law grad and former chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee. He is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Mayer Brown. (Mayer Brown)

Ted Kaufman. Though not a lawyer, Kaufman, a longtime friend, adviser and staffer for Biden, is a senior lecturing fellow at Duke Law School. (Duke)

Additional coverage:

Bloomberg: "Obama Names Podesta, Jarrett to Head Transition Team"

Daily Kos: "OTT: The Obama Transition Team in Detail"

London Times: "Transition team looks to emulate Roosevelt, not Carter"

ABA Journal (November 2008 cover story): "The Lawyers Who May Run America"

Council on Foreign Relations (Oct. 2, 2008): "Foreign Policy Brain Trusts: Obama's Advisers"

Last Updated 11:45 a.m. Nov. 6.

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Posted by Tim - 2 months, 2 days, 1 hour, 4 minutes ago

Harvard, Harvard, Berkley, Virginia… aaand JMLS. See? You don’t have to go to a fancy school to make something of that JD. You just have to be brothers with the Mayor.
Posted by Ellen Barshevsky - 2 months, 1 day, 15 hours, 34 minutes ago

This is VERY interesting. I would NOT want to be in POLITICS, but I have worked in the Public Secter before. I think we ALL have to figure out how to get out of the Economic SLUMP we are in.

My Boyfriend knows one person who went to HARVARD, and he said he is SMART. Now mabye he is and mabye he is NOT, but my boyfriend says if you can go to HARVARD, maybe you should go.

I did NOT even apply to Harvard. But if I had to get a LLM degree, mabye I will apply. For now, I am VERY happy working, and will soon ask Alan for us to get MARRIED.
Posted by MarkJ - 2 months, 13 hours, 32 minutes ago

Judging from the above list of suspects, if lawyers think they’re hated now, they’d better stand by for even more abuse.
Posted by Diggs - 2 months, 13 hours, 24 minutes ago

Obama’s chickens…......coming home….to roost!
Posted by Georgia L. Holmes - 2 months, 13 hours, 14 minutes ago

I contributed $25 to Obama’s campaign two days before the Iowa caucuses mainly because I realized he was a constitutional law professor and thought the country really needed someone who understood something about constitutional law from a Democratic as opposed to Federalist Society perspective. When history examines the failures of the Bush administration, I am convinced it will take note of its dominance by nonlawyers and quasi lawyers who graduated from Liberty Law School with no appreciation for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution in our deomocracy. Their only concern was to promote their own narrow philosophical /Federalist Society agenda. So, on the one hand I am thrilled that mainstream legal professonals will again bring a respect for law to our national government.. On the other hand, I agree that he needs to widen his circle of advisors beyond the Ivy League a little more.
Posted by No Respect - 2 months, 12 hours, 3 minutes ago

Ellen (#2)... you are a dork! Georgia (#5)... did you ever think that maybe your views are a little too narrow? It doesn’t take a lawyer to understand and appreciate the Constitution.
Posted by Bill - 2 months, 11 hours, 56 minutes ago

Ellen - you werked in the public secter?

Georgia - Obama and the “progressives” don’t understand the Constitution. Instead, they “intepret” (i.e., reinvent) it to acheive the desired results. I’m not defending Bush at all - I’ll be relieved to see him go. But I’m not so confident and excited about what an Obama administration will do regarding our fundamental natural rights.
Posted by Bert - 2 months, 11 hours, 48 minutes ago

As I recall Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s closest legal advisor, went to the University of Michigan Law School. What is with the Harvard spin? Everyone knows that when Harvard people need sage legal advice they turn to Michigan Law School grads!
Posted by Go Green - 2 months, 11 hours, 36 minutes ago

lol they definitly don’t turn to the Michigan Football team for anything these days.
Posted by Chris - 2 months, 11 hours, 36 minutes ago

Georgia, “quasi lawyers” who are you to make that distinction.
Posted by Scottsdale Al - 2 months, 11 hours, 17 minutes ago

So refreshing to see the expansion of Ivy League intellectuals that currently dominate Wall Street and corporate board rooms expand their prowess in the Obama Adminsitration. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - Ivy League Alumni HQ.
Posted by Constitution - 2 months, 11 hours, 13 minutes ago

NoRespect is right: it doesn’t take a lawyer to understand and appreciate the Constitution. But it does take a lawyer to twist and turn it on it’s head so that the Supreme Court can decide it means the exact opposite of what lay people think it does. The prospect of even more lawyers running this country should frighten everyone - especially those of us who are lawyers.
Posted by bubba - 2 months, 10 hours, 56 minutes ago

More frightening than the so-called lawyers who legalized torture and turned the office of the Vice President into some free-floating, nebulous entity that is accountable to no one? It’s so very entertaining listening to a bunch of uptight white guys whine the first moment they don’t get their way.
Posted by Bert - 2 months, 10 hours, 37 minutes ago

“Go Green” -Last time I checked Harvard’s football team wasn’t doing all that great either! Maybe they need Michigan Law grads for a number of reasons!
Posted by Ivy League 101 - 2 months, 10 hours, 17 minutes ago

Why do people make fun of the ivy league. Look at the good job they do on wall street. Just imagine what they will do on Pennsyvania avenue.
Posted by Neal - 2 months, 9 hours, 59 minutes ago

Georgia at #5, I am baffled. I am not sure you understand what the Federalist Society is or what it stands for (which is ok - a lot of people don’t) or what the word “Democratic” connotates (which might be a bigger problem). The Federalist Society not only takes its name from the Federalist Papers, a source of insight into the minds of the Constitution’s drafters, but it also stands for clearly separated branches of power and a judiciary limited to its original purpose of applying the law. These may not be popular ideas today, but they fall in line with a careful reading of the Constitution and can hardly be passed off as narrow-minded partisan views held by some weird fringe group.

Also, there are a large number of S.C. Justices, Attorneys General, and law professors who would likely take offense at being lumped together with these “nonlawyers and quasi lawyers” that have brought such shame to our rule of law. And I hardly know the right response to the accusation that Bush’s neocon army in any way represents the ideals of the Federalists. We don’t need to look past FISA to shut that myth down.

I’m not sure how the word “democratic” is meant to be used here. Democratic as in we are a democracy, and the republic underpinnings be damned? Or Democratic as in only the constitutional viewpoint of Democratic and left-leaning politicians should be considered mainstream? I’m not sure I see either one as correct.

To sum, let’s not criticize the Federalist Society for things that they aren’t, and let’s not suppose there is only one way to view the Constitution.
Posted by L.N. Barshevsky - 2 months, 9 hours, 16 minutes ago

Bubba,
Please don’t slander uptight white guys. I am one and I voted for Obama (and donated to the campaign, too). Please don’t assume that all white males are conservative whack jobs—or vice versa.

W’s administration trampled the constitution. And he tried to appoint Harriet Meiers to the Supreme Court. Nobody with any respect for the law in this country should be able to support that party until it has redeemed itself. I think that will take a while.
Posted by J in Minnesota - 2 months, 9 hours, 6 minutes ago

Forget the Harvard Law connections - look for the Chicago Daley Machine connections (Valerie Jarrett, Bill Daley, Axelrod etc.) - young idealists be prepared to be pushed aside by the men with the pinkie rings
Posted by CJT - 2 months, 8 hours, 42 minutes ago

Neal is 100% correct. I would also add that the Federalist Society does not espouse a singular viewpoint. Those who think it’s made up of solely conservatives are dead wrong. The fundamental principle is that the courts exist to interpret the law and not make them. This is not a conservative viewpoint, rather it only appears such because on certain hot button issues (abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide, etc) the law (and to an extent popular opinion) has not caught up with certain group’s ideas of what the social order should be. These groups then turn to the courts hoping for a “shortcut” to bypass the legislative process, popular opinion, and indeed, our very democracy. I consider myself pro-choice and am 100% behind the rights of gays to marry, yet when interest groups bypass the democratic process by running to the courts we see a backlash like what happened in California. The Federalist Society viewpoint might be that the courts have no business deciding whether gay couples should marry, but that doesn’t mean that many of its members wouldn’t accept gay marriage as the result of the democratic process.
Posted by J. Henry - 2 months, 6 hours, 21 minutes ago

What I fear is that a Pres. Obama will appoint Patrick Fitzgerald to U.S. Attorney General to get him out of Chicago, then appoint a do-nothing to replace Fitzgerald, and all the investigations of Cook County politics will come to abrupt halt.
Posted by Brian - 1 month, 4 weeks, 1 day, 23 hours, 29 minutes ago

Now, with O’Bama as the victor, something good will come of this besides full employment of these ivy league lawyers, .......say like the Cubs winning the Series next year.
Posted by Andy the Lawyer - 1 month, 3 weeks, 5 days, 20 hours, 18 minutes ago

Now Ellen’s boyfriend has a name. This is getting creepy in a Stephen King’s “Misery” sort of way.

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