Barack Obama was popular with his law students at the University of Chicago, where he taught as a senior lecturer on constitutional law.

The Sun-Times in Chicago reviewed Mr. Obama’s student evaluations over 10 years of his teaching and found the students “almost always” rated Mr. Obama one of their top instructors (except, for unknown reasons, during one quarter in 1997).

The candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is on leave from his job at the university, where he began teaching in 1993.

The newspaper notes that students signed up for the popular professor’s courses even though they were often scheduled for early on Monday mornings or late on Friday evenings (which kept students in class through a well-attended wine-and-cheese hour held elsewhere at the law school).

“We’d be in class and get messages that he would come in 45 minutes late, and everyone would wait for him,” the Sun-Times quoted a former student, Andrew Janis, now a New York lawyer, as saying.

The student evaluations of Mr. Obama that remain at the university’s library are overwhelmingly positive, the newspaper said, noting that some of the evaluations are missing. A reporter for the Sun-Times was unable to find the four students who said they would not recommend Mr. Obama’s class to another student.

“I loved teaching,” Mr. Obama told the newspaper. “Some of the public-speaking skills I developed in the classroom—stay on your toes, don’t make my answers too long—I’m using on the campaign trail.”