A Commander in Chief In law school, Barack Obama ’91 already looked—and led—like a future president.

Faced with important decisions about their lives, people often make pretty bad choices—choices they would not have made if they paid full attention and possessed complete information, unlimited cognitive abilities, and complete self-control. To take just one example, many people never get around to joining their employer’s retirement savings plan, even when it is heavily subsidized.

The U.S. Constitution is 219 years old now, and the revolutionary system of government it created has survived and spread across the globe. No wonder many Americans consider it an almost sacred document, the final say on governmental powers and individual rights.

“City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation,” forthcoming from Cornell University Press in December, examines how state laws shackle cities. Barron and Frug look at how state law determines what cities can and cannot do to raise revenue, control land use and improve schools.

In a new book, Professor Louis Kaplow '81 "steps back and considers the relationships among the parts." The book -- “The Theory of Taxation and Public Economics” (Princeton 2008) -- stands to secure him a place in the firmament of public economists and scholars in public finance.

Gerhardt Bubník LL.M. ’69 still likes the ice. The former competitive skater hung up his skates years ago but has kept his edge, as a skating judge and then a legal adviser to the International Skating Union—all while building a law practice that spanned three political regimes.

Louisa May Alcott once described a philosopher as “a man up in a balloon” tethered to the earth by his family. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father” (Norton, 2007), John Matteson ’86 chronicles the tension and affection in that vertical relationship.

Although she is now a partner at Ropes & Gray in Boston, Jane Willis ’94 credits much of her success as a litigator to a simple strategy she learned outside the law firm and the courtroom—at the blackjack table.

The first time (or two) Isaac Lidsky ’04 was denied a Supreme Court clerkship, he didn’t sweat it. He had overcome other challenges and wouldn’t let a few rejection letters get in the way of a dream he’d held since boyhood. “I used to joke that my rule for myself was that I’d continue applying until I was older than the youngest justice,” he says.