Mar

31

Brands and Bankruptcy

Posted by: | March 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

Congratulations to 3L Laura Steele, the winner of this year’s Frank DeGuire Award for the best student comment in the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review.  Laura’s terrific comment, entitled “Actual or Hypothetical: Determining the Proper Test for Trademark Licensee Rights in Bankruptcy,” is available on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: As trademark rights become an [...]

Mar

31

Dean James Jenkins: Baseball Pioneer

Posted by: | March 31, 2010 | 1 Comment

Next week marks both the opening day of the baseball season in Milwaukee and the finals of the Jenkins Moot Court competition.  Few recognize the historical connection between these two events.  The moot court competition is named for James G. Jenkins, the first dean of the Law School whose bust adorns the waiting area outside [...]

Mar

30

Professor Alison Julien Joins Legal Writing Institute Board of Directors

Posted by: | March 30, 2010 | 1 Comment

Congratulations to Professor Alison Julien, who was recently elected to serve on the board of directors of the Legal Writing Institute. The Legal Writing Institute (LWI) is the largest organization of legal writing professors and the second largest U.S. organization of law school professors.  LWI has over 2,100 members from 38 countries.

Mar

30

2010 Jenkins Competitors Advance to Semifinals

Posted by: | March 30, 2010 | Leave a Comment

After three intense preliminary rounds of competition, four teams have advanced to the semifinal rounds of the 2010 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition.  Please congratulate the following teams:  Margaret Delain and Tiffany Winter Gabe Johnson-Karp and Alexandra Grimley Ashley Roth and Emily Lonergan Nathaniel Wojan and Nicole Kowalski  The semifinal rounds will take place on [...]

Mar

29

Games and Other Uncopyrightable Systems

Posted by: | March 29, 2010 | 4 Comments

I’ve long been interested in copyright and games—an interest that began with copyright and video games, but worked its way backwards to consider games generally. Games exist at the boundary of copyright law: they seem to include much that is protectable, and yet there is a general rule in copyright doctrine that games are not [...]

Mar

26

For Finance Industry, a Possible Alternative to the Deregulation-Bust-Bailout-Reregulation Cycle

Posted by: | March 26, 2010 | 4 Comments

No one wants a replay of the financial meltdown of the past couple years, but can new regulations really provide a long-term solution?  Periods of heightened regulatory oversight seem inevitably followed by periods of deregulation, while the prospect of government bailouts may create a moral hazard that promotes excessive risk-taking.  Thus, in an interesting new article on [...]

Mar

26

Who Is/Was Thomas More?

Posted by: | March 26, 2010 | 4 Comments

Thomas More was a very successful English lawyer (barrister — Lincoln’s Inn, 1501), a judge, and a Member of Parliament about the time of King Henry VIII. But he was much more than that. He came from a family of lawyers. His father, Sir John More, was a prominent lawyer and a judge. We would [...]

Mar

25

More Developments at the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Posted by: | March 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment

I have to say that I was surprised by Justice Gableman’s decision to file a motion asking Justice Pat Crooks to recuse himself from his pending disciplinary case. I understand the rationale. Justice Crooks did make remarks pertaining to some of the issues in the disciplinary proceeding in the course of his writings in Allen [...]

Mar

24

Supreme Court Hears Argument on Whether NLRB Actually Still Exists

Posted by: | March 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Yesterday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in an important case at the intersection of labor law, statutory interpretation, and administrative law. In New Process Steel, L.P. v. NLRB, on appeal from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Court will decide whether a two-member National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) has [...]

Mar

23

The End of the World As We Knew It?

Posted by: | March 23, 2010 | 10 Comments

Prior to Sunday’s vote on health care reform, Nancy Pelosi said that we were “at the door step of history.” Mark Steyn counseled caution, reminding us that, on Christmas Eve, we were at the “garden gate of history” but then Scott Brown was elected and “we backed down the front drive of history reversing over [...]

Mar

22

The Native American Mascot Issue Will Just Not Go Away

Posted by: | March 22, 2010 | 15 Comments

WISCONSIN.  In Wisconsin, the legislature is considering a bill that would give Native Americans the right to formally object to the use of a disparaging nickname by a high school in their school district.  Under the Democratic-sponsored bill, anyone who objects to the use of a race-based team name, mascot, symbol, or logo in their [...]

Mar

19

Judging Friday’s SCOWIS Decisions

Posted by: | March 19, 2010 | 8 Comments

On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court released two opinions that reflect the court’s new jurisprudential direction. Allow me to focus on the opinion with a much greater discussion of jurisprudence. (The other is State v. Wood, a due process challenge to forced administration of medication in a state-administered facility to a person who had been [...]

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