Barack Hussein Obama II (: Harvard Law Review
Barack Hussein Obama II (: Harvard Law Review
Barack Hussein Obama II (: Harvard Law Review
44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the
office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard
Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community
organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and
taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He
served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004,
running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000.
In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the
United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote
address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in
November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007 and, after a close primary campaign
against Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008, he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party
primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John
McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine
months after his election, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
During his first two years in office, Obama signed into law economic stimulus legislation in
response to the Great Recession in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
of 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act
of 2010. Other major domestic initiatives in his first term included the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act, often referred to as "Obamacare"; the DoddFrank Wall Street Reform
and Consumer Protection Act; and the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. In foreign
policy, Obama ended U.S. military involvement in the Iraq War, increased U.S. troop levels
in Afghanistan, signed the New START arms control treaty with Russia, ordered U.S. militar