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That caution has now begun to slip away, and a more muscular approach to reforming the federal judicial system is plain to see. Shortly after his yellow-pad meeting, Obama sent an order, by way of the White House counsel, to draw up a list of nonviolent clemency candidates like Hernandez. He encouraged Attorney General Eric Holder to undertake a new sweeping review of the prosecutorial practices that might result in disproportionate sentences. When reporters asked Obama about marijuana, the President no longer just repeated his old lines about not supporting legal weed. He quickly added that something needed to be done about the inequities in punishment for minor drug offenses. "Middle-class kids don't get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do," he told the New Yorker late last year.
Since Obama's return from Hawaii, hardly a week has passed without some new announcement of a program or policy push. In late January, the Justice Department issued an open call to America's defense attorneys to help find more convicts now in federal prison whom Obama might free. Holder gave a speech on Feb. 11 calling on states to restore voting rights to nearly 6 million convicted felons. And in the State of the Union, Obama departed from his past color-blind formulations by announcing a new program specifically to help "young men of color facing tough odds stay on track and reach their full potential." He calls the initiative My Brother's Keeper, and it combines more executive actions to keep nonviolent youth out of the justice system with a new partnership with nonprofit foundations and for-profit businesses. "The President is looking on the whole at all the folks in our country who do want to work hard and who do want to play by the rules but just need to be given a chance," says Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest advisers.
A bipartisan agreement to reform drug-sentencing laws has also emerged, uniting some of the most liberal and conservative lawmakers in Congress. In late January, a bill sponsored by Tea Party Republican Mike Lee of Utah and Obama ally Dick Durbin of Illinois passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote of 13 to 5. If passed by the full Congress, it would allow for the judicial reviews of more than 8,000 crack-cocaine sentences in the federal system, cut mandatory minimum requirements and give judges new powers to grant leniency.
The White House and the Justice Department have made clear their eagerness to see the bill pass, cementing Obama's legacy as the first President in three decades to dial back the punishments for violating federal drug laws. For the first black President, who became a political activist out of college to right the injustices he saw in America's big cities, the stakes are both more personal and more profound than he tends to let on in major speeches. And his success or failure, by the end of his second term, could help determine his legacy as a champion of the principles he defines himself by. "Every now and again, there is a moment, and this is one of those moments," Attorney General Holder tells TIME of the recent push. "It is our strong desire to seize this moment."