Pres. Barack Obama – Editor of the <i>Harvard Law Review</i> – Has No Law License???

I saw a note slide across the #TCOT feed on Twitter last night that mentioned Michelle Obama had no law license. This struck me as odd, since (a) she went to school to be a lawyer, and (b) she just recently held a position with the University of Chicago Hospitals as legal counsel — and that’s a pretty hard job to qualify for without a law license.

But being a licensed professional myself, i knew that every state not only requires licensure, they make it possible to check online the status of any licensed professional. So I did, and here’s the results from theARDC Website:

She “voluntarily surrendered” her license in 1993.  Let me explain what that means.  A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something i need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license.  No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” your license about five seconds before the state suspends (or disbars) you.

Here’s an illustration: I’m a nurse.  At various times in my 28 years of nursing I’ve done other things when I got burned out; most notably a few years as a limousine driver; even an Amway salesman at one point.  I always, always renewed my nursing license — simply becuase it’s easier to send the state $49.00 a month than to pay the $200, take a test, wate six weeks, etc., etc. . .  I’ve worked (recently) in a Nursing Home where there was an 88 year old lawyer and a 95 year old physician.  Both of them still had current licensures as well.  They would never DREAM of letting their licenses lapse.  I happen to know there is currently in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City Indiana an inmate who is a licensed physician, convicted of murder when he chased the two burlars who entered his home and terrorized his family into the street and killed them.  (And I can’t say i blame him for that, either.)  This phisican still has an active medical license and still sees patients, writes prescriptions, etc all from inside the prison.

And he renews his medical licese every two years, too.

I tried looking up why she would “Voluntarily surrender” her licese, but Illinois does not have it’s 1993 records online.

But when I searched for “Obama”, I found this:

“Voluntarily retired” — what does that mean? Bill Clinton hung onto his law license until he was convicted of making a false statement in the Lewinsky case and had to “Voluntarily Surrender” his license too.

This is the former editor of the Harvard Law Review who doesn’t seem to give a crap about his law license.

Something else odd; while the Search feature brings up the names, any seaches for the Disciplinary actions ends quicky.

As in, Too Quickly. Less than a half-second quickly on a Search Engine that can take five seconds to Search for anything.

As in, “there’s a block on that information” kind of thing.

So we have the first Lawyer President and First Lady — who don’t actually have licenses to practice law.

There’s more to this story, I’m sure. I’ll let you know when I find it.

~~ACP~~