Work-Life Advocate Joins First Lady's Office

Michelle Obama recently announced that Jocelyn Frye will serve as Director of Policy and Projects for the First Lady. According to The Juggle, the selection of Ms. Frye suggests that Michelle Obama is "preparing to take an activist stance on such policy issues as family leave and flexible scheduling."

As general counsel for the National Partnership for Women and Families, Ms. Frye has been one of Washington’s most visible advocates of expanding family leave and ending pregnancy discrimination. She’ll bring 15 years of policy-making experience to bear behind Ms. Obama’s stated plans to emphasize work-life issues and aid for military families. Ms. Frye has a reputation as a consensus builder, a front-lines opponent of Bush-era efforts to curtail family leave, and a patient, articulate spokesperson for low- and middle-income families.

Why Was It Funny for Obama's Speechwriter to Grope Senator Clinton?

If you look up Barack Obama's 27-year-old speechwriter, Jon Favreau, on Wikipedia, you'll learn that n December of 2008, "a picture of Favreau performing a suggestive gesture (grabbing a breast) to a cardboard cut-out of Hillary Clinton surfaced on Facebook" and that allegedly Clinton's "spokesman referred to the photo as 'an example of just good-natured fun between former rival camps.'"  

Dawn Johnson, Assistant Attorney General

In addition to his nomination of Elena Kagan for the position of Solicitor General, Barack Obama recently tapped Dawn Johnsen to be an assistant attorney general in his administration.

Johnsen is currently a Professor of Law and Ira C. Batman Faculty Fellow at the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington. She spent several years as an attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, serving as its Acting Assistant Attorney General in 1997 and 1998.

A Constitutional Law scholar, Johnsen has published extensively on Constitutional powers and authority.  Her recent law review articles include Faithfully Executing the Laws: Internal Legal Constraints on Executive Power and Lessons from the Right: Progressive Constitutionalism for the Twenty-First Century.

Elena Kagan, Solicitor General

President-elect Obama announced key Department of Justice posts today, including the nomination of Elena Kagan for Solictitor General. Currently the 11th Dean of Harvard Law School (and the first woman in that post), Kagan served in Bill Clinton's White House from 1995 to 1999. During the Clinton Adminstration she served first as Associate Counsel to the President and then as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

In addition to her current deanship at Obama's Alma Mater, Kagan and Obama taught at the University of Chicago Law School at the same time during the 1990s. Like Obama, Kagan was editor of the Harvard Law Review

 If confirmed, Elena Kagan will be the first woman solicitor general.

A Note on the Democratic In-Fighting and the Image of Corporate Counsel

So in the scuffle that was the Democratic Presidential Debate last night Clinton and Obama exchanged a number of accusations including that Clinton served on the board of directors of Wal-Mart; Obama worked for a law firm that represented an inner-city slumlord. Whether or not those barbs are accurate, in good taste, or relevant has generated a lot of media coverage. But the accusations that really caught my attention were the references both Clinton and Obama made to their opponent's service with "corporate law firms."