Sep

29

Mandatory Foreclosure Mediation: A Good Idea?

Posted by: | September 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

The Florida Supreme Court has ordered a review of its 18-month-old mandatory foreclosure mediation program.  Should a similar process come to Wisconsin? In July 2011, Wisconsin had the 10th highest foreclosure rate in the United States, only four spots behind the State of Florida.  Several initiatives in Wisconsin have attempted to inject mediation into the [...]

Sep

29

Getting What You Pay For In Legal Education

Posted by: | September 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment

[Editor's Note: This month, we asked a few veteran faculty members to share their reflections on what has changed the most in legal education since they became law professors.  This is the sixth and final entry in the series.] Legal education is no longer lean. When I was hired as Marquette Law School’s third administrator [...]

Sep

27

The Unfortunately Forgotten Vernon X. Miller

Posted by: | September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Who was the first Marquette University law professor to have clerked for a justice on the United States Supreme Court?  (Hint: the answer is not current dean Joseph Kearney.)  Who was the first, and only, Marquette law professor ever elected president of the Association of American Law Schools?  Who was the only Marquette Law Professor [...]

Sep

27

Lawyer Jokes

Posted by: | September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

First, pop culture lawyers were heroes. Then, pop culture lawyers were devils. These two extremes capture most of what the world sees of lawyers—they are either pursuers or destroyers of justice based on the angle of perception or bias. However both of these extremes leave out a major aspect of every real American lawyer: their [...]

Sep

27

Technology Has Enhanced Legal Education Significantly, But Its Essential Components Remain the Same

Posted by: | September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

[Editor's Note: This month, we asked a few veteran faculty members to share their reflections on what has changed the most in legal education since they became law professors.  This is the fifth in the series.] As I finish my twenty-second year as a law professor, I marvel at how technological advances and the proliferation of [...]

Sep

27

Evolution and the Constitution

Posted by: | September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Recent news reports make much of the fact that, with one exception, none of the current Republican candidates for President has been willing to embrace the theory of evolution as the commonly accepted explanation of how the multiple forms of life currently existing on our planet came to be.  Instead, several of the Republican hopefuls have argued pointedly that [...]

Sep

27

“Reality-Challenged Theories of Punishment”: Weisberg Lecture on Oct. 6

Posted by: | September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

I’m looking forward to Robert Weisberg’s talk here next week. He is delivering this year’s George and Margaret Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law. I think we can expect a pungent critique of retributive theories of punishment. Here is the description: The theme of “American exceptionalism” has found perverse corroboration in the size of the prison [...]

Sep

27

Doing Better Than “Nailing and Jailing” in the Fight Against Violence

Posted by: | September 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment

As Milwaukee County Children’s Court Judge Joe Donald put it, “We do a very good job of trailing, nailing, and jailing.” But can Milwaukee do more when it comes to dealing with crime so that it can be prevented and the lives of those on the path to committing crimes turn out better? The good [...]

Sep

26

Generalist Versus Specialist Judges

Posted by: | September 26, 2011 | 1 Comment

The Federal Circuit and a few other counterexamples notwithstanding, American courts are not substantively specialized.  By and large, the American judge is thus a generalist.  For better or worse, our judiciary seems to be holding out against the  pressures toward specialization that have so marked the contemporary legal and medical professions.  Is this a good [...]

Sep

25

The Supreme Court and the Fate of the Ministerial Exception

Posted by: | September 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment

In 1999, Cheryl Perich began service as a lay teacher at the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Michigan.  A year later, she became a “called teacher,” selected by the congregation to serve as a commissioned minister and charged with duties of a more pastoral nature, such as teaching religion classes, leading the [...]

Sep

24

New Report Shows Big Increase in Arrests for Simple Possession Since 1980

Posted by: | September 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Last week, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released an interesting new report, Arrest in the United States, 1980-2009.  I was particularly interested in the data on arrests for simple drug possession or use, which accounted for about ten percent of all arrests in 2009.  This seems a little high (so to speak), especially in comparison to [...]

Sep

24

An Update on Federal Judicial Vacancies

Posted by: | September 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment

The maintenance of an effective appointment process for federal judges is important because adequate staffing is critical to the function of the judiciary. Appointment delays and prolonged vacancies create a shortage of judges. A shortage of judges in turn contributes to case backlogs that make it extremely difficult for courts to administer justice in a [...]

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