Building the New Marquette University Law School

Why I’m a Builder

A conversation with Dave Erne

When Dave Erne and his wife, Ann, came to Milwaukee in 1968, they didn’t know anyone here. “But this community embraced us, personally and professionally,” he says. “It has given us much, and we want to give back. One of the ways we’re doing that is by supporting the campaign to build Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall.”

Now retired from one of the city’s larger firms, Dave indicates that, while he didn’t graduate from Marquette (he earned his JD degree from Harvard), “I have always admired it. And my belief in my community’s law school overrides the fact that I didn’t go to school here.”

He adds, “Having top institutions of higher learning – where free and spirited exchanges of ideas take place – is critical to the long-term prosperity and overall well-being of a community. This is most certainly true in the relationship between southeastern Wisconsin and Marquette University Law School, where the best and brightest are gaining the knowledge and skills to solve their future clients’ problems.”

But Dave maintains that, in order to continue to be the outstanding institution it has been for so long, Marquette must upgrade its working environment. “The Law School needs this to attract quality students and instructors, maintain its reputation for academic excellence, and stimulate creativity and achievement in the future. The innovative model for the new Marquette University Law School – Eckstein Hall – will provide that environment.”

Dave credits that innovative model to, among others, Marquette Law School Dean Joseph Kearney. “Dean Kearney is doing an exceptionally outstanding job,” Dave asserts. “He has garnered school-wide and community-wide respect as an educator. And it’s obvious he has the best interests of the Law School and its community as a whole at heart. Everyone admires him because of his ambitious ideas, including this important effort to build Eckstein Hall.”