Israpundit
by Bill Levinson
Chicago Law School faculty hated Obama reports,
- President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he “fibbed” on his bar application.
The latter statement is at present merely a speculative allegation, but a search of Illinois’ Attorney Registration Web site shows that Barack Obama “retired” from the practice of law while his wife merely inactivated her license.* There may in fact be a very big difference between these statuses.
Professional engineers, for example, require an active license in any state in which they wish to practice engineering or use the title “Professional Engineer.” If an engineer does not plan to practice engineering in a state in which he or she holds a license, he can inactivate it. This means he must pay to reactivate it before he resumes practice in that state. Michelle Obama could presumably resume practice of law in Illinois by paying the license fee to reactivate her license. Barack Obama is, however, “retired,” which suggests that he surrendered his license–in contract to, for example, Senator Bill Frist who is in fact still licensed to practice medicine. This raises a lot of questions.
* The statement that Michelle Obama is on “court-ordered” inactive status apparently means that an attorney who wished to inactivate his or her license needed the permission of the Illinois Supreme Court, and perhaps IARDC could have done a better job of explaining this on its record page to avoid making it look like some kind of disciplinary action was taken.
There is, however, apparently a difference between Rule 770 inactive status (Michelle Obama) and retired (Barack Obama).
President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he “fibbed” on his bar application.
