A case of the President not sucking so much

I like this:

Former students and colleagues describe Mr. Obama as a minimalist (skeptical of court-led efforts at social change) and a structuralist (interested in how the law metes out power in society). And more than anything else, he is a pragmatist who urged those around him to be more keenly attuned to the real-life impact of decisions. This may be his distinguishing quality as a legal thinker: an unwillingness to deal in abstraction, a constant desire to know how court decisions affect people’s lives.

“The University of Chicago was and is full of eminent theorizers who wrap up huge areas of the law by applying some magic key,” said David Franklin, a former student. “He didn’t do any of that; he wasn’t interested in high theory at all.”

Though Mr. Obama rarely spoke of his own views, students say they sensed his disdain for formalism, the idea — often espoused by Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas, but sometimes by liberals as well — that law can be decided independent of the political and social context in which it is applied. To make his point, Mr. Obama, then a state senator, took students with him to Springfield, Ill., the capital, to watch hearings and see him hash out legislation.

And he asked constant questions about consequences of laws: What would happen if a mother’s welfare grant did not increase with the birth of additional children? As a state legislator, how much could he be influenced by a donor’s contribution?

In other words, the law exists within the context of the society it serves for the purpose of establishing real world justice instead of just in the mind of some judge or professor for the purpose of his or her own intellectual masturbation. What a novel idea.