Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

I was having lunch the other day with someone who works in city government, and we were talking about the serious foreclosure problem in Milwaukee. He was lamenting the fact that in some of the poorest sections of the city, the housing market is fundamentally broken. Homes, now owned by the city, can be purchased for as little as $5,000 and yet they still aren’t selling. If you want some sobering evidence of the magnitude of the nation’s housing market collapse and the impact of the Great Recession, check out the listings. They’re stunning, really.

Mayor Tom Barrett estimates the foreclosure crisis has cost Milwaukee $5 billion dollars in assessed value. The city has tried to get a handle on the problem, but it persists, eating away at once-stable neighborhoods. In 2008, the Mayor launched the Milwaukee Foreclosure Partnership Initiative, which tries to prevent foreclosures and stabilize neighborhoods.  There’s a branch of city government that directly addresses housing issues. And last week, the mayor announced he would be committing another $2.3 million to address the foreclosure problem. As part of that initiative, scores of empty homes will be torn down because they’re a blight on city neighborhoods. As a longtime Milwaukee resident, I’d by less than honest if I didn’t say the specter of Detroit came to mind when I heard the news.

But the next Detroit is hardly the image thousands of newcomers have of my hometown. After losing 20 per cent of its population from 1960-2000, Milwaukee is growing again. It’s not a population explosion, but it’s growth. Recent census numbers show that from 2010 to 2012, the city added 4,000 residents. What’s most interesting is who’s choosing to live in Milwaukee. Reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (part of a collaboration with Marquette Law School) found that in the last decade, there has been a migration of young people to the city. Many are college graduates. They live downtown, on the city’s east side, and in “hot” neighborhoods like the Third Ward, Walker’s Point, Bay View, Brewers’ Hill and Washington Heights. Their presence has brought a new energy and economic vitality to parts of Milwaukee, with restaurants and shops racing to meet the demands of younger consumers. These newcomers are helping fuel a change in Milwaukee’s risk-averse entrepreneurial culture, and have created a dynamic arts and entertainment scene. Their arrival is also welcome news to established Fortune 500 companies like Northwestern Mutual, which is planning a new skyscraper for its downtown campus, along with hundreds of news jobs. Read more »

Last week, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics issued a new report compiling nearly two decades of data on gun crime, Firearm Violence, 1993-2011.  No doubt, many readers will pore over the report’s abundant tables and graphs looking for support for their views on gun control.  However, I was most struck by a breakdown of firearm violence based on population size (table 5).  Among the six size-based categories, the most dangerous places were cities of 500,000-999,999 — the category containing Milwaukee (pop. 597,867).  These mid-large cities not only have rates of gun crime that are about four times higher than cities of less than 100,000, but they are also forty-four percent higher than cities of one million or more.

Last week, the Circuit Court in Milwaukee County rejected the effort of Sheriff David A. Clarke to maintain control over the County Correctional Facility South.  (Judge Van Grunsven’s ruling is available here.)  Although the CCF-S (formerly known as the House of Corrections) was run for decades by a superintendent who was independent of the Sheriff, the County transferred control over the CCF-S to the Sheriff in 2009 as a result of security concerns at the facility.  However, the new management proved less than satisfactory to some important stakeholders.

Conflict over Clarke’s administration of the CCF-S seems connected to a wider ideological conflict between Clarke and other County leaders over the incarceration of relatively low-risk criminal offenders, with Clarke taking a very critical position regarding various criminal-justice initiatives that might be grouped under the heading “evidence-based decision making.”  (Background on the conflict is here; my critique of some of Clarke’s views is here.)  Clarke has been unsupportive of treatment programs and alternatives to incarceration, and his administration of the CCF-S has apparently reflected this perspective.  Finally, through its 2013 budget, the County Board decided to transfer control of the CCF-S back to a superintendent.  Clarke’s control over the downtown jail, which has been his all along, remains unaffected.

Clarke sued the County in order to block the transfer.   Read more »

Provocative essays on the future of Milwaukee in the emerging Chicago megacity lead the content of a packed and wide-ranging new edition of Marquette Lawyer, the Marquette University Law School semiannual magazine.

The megacity that stretches along Lake Michigan, from north of Milwaukee down through Chicago to northwestern Indiana, was the focus of a July 2012 conference at Marquette Law School, “Milwaukee’s Future in the Chicago Megacity.” The magazine includes two essays building on presentations at that conference: “Rivalry, Resignation, and Regionalization,” by historian John Gurda, and “Flying Too Close to the Sun?” by urban blogger and expert Aaron Renn. My own contribution is an overview of efforts to build cooperation in economic development in the tri-state region.

The magazine also presents “The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Origins of Birthright Citizenship,” an essay by Columbia University historian Eric Foner based on his Boden Lecture at Marquette Law School last fall, and “The Accidental Crime Commission: Its Legacies and Lessons,” by Franklin E. Zimring, of the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, based on his Fall 2012 Barrock Lecture here.

Marquette Law Professor David Ray Papke gave a lecture in Uganda on the connection between the law and social power. “Exploring Socio-Legal Dominance in Context: An Approach to American Legal History,” based on his talk, is included in the new magazine.

The magazine also contains news of the Law School and of some of its students and alumni. The printed magazine is being sent to Law School students and alumni across the country and to many others. You can get a jump on reading this issue on the Law School’s website.

To read the interactive version of the magazine, click here.

To read specific articles and sections, click on any of these:

For all three pieces on the Chicago megacity, click here.

The individual pieces are available by clicking on each of these:

Emerging Megacity: Perspectives on the Future of Chicago and Milwaukee

Thinking and Acting (and Flourishing?) as a Region

Rivalry, Resignation, and Regionalization

Flying Too Close to the Sun? 

And you can click on each of these:

The Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Origins of Birthright Citizenship

The Accidental Crime Commission: Its Legacies and Lessons

Exploring Socio-Legal Dominance in Context: An Approach to American Legal History

Law School News

Remarks of Dean Joseph D. Kearney at the Investiture of Circuit Judge Lindsey Grady

From the Dean

Alumni Class Notes

Alumni Awards

The next time you see Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, ask him about his map. It’s the Mayor’s latest weapon in his battle to stop the state from eliminating residency requirements for municipal employees in Wisconsin. More than 120 municipalities have rules spelling out where their employees can live. But Governor Walker wants to change that. He says residency requirements are unnecessary and outdated, even counter-productive, and he has included language in his state budget that would end them.

Mayor Barrett says the Governor’s proposal doesn’t belong in the budget, since it’s not a fiscal item. But Barrett’s concerns go much deeper. In a recent e-mail to supporters, Barrett said an end to the city’s 75-year-old residency requirement could “destabilize” Milwaukee. I pressed the Mayor on that claim in a recent television interview. He said philosophically he agrees with the notion that people should be able to live where they want, but that local municipalities should be able to determine the conditions of employment for the people they hire. In Barrett’s world, that translates into a simple reality. If you don’t want to live in Milwaukee, don’t apply for a job with the city. He said there’s been no shortage of applicants.

Perhaps more important, Barrett said the value of assessed property in Milwaukee had fallen five billion dollars because of the economic downturn. He argued that based on experiences in other cities, such as Detroit, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Cleveland, significant numbers of city employees were likely to leave the city should the residency requirement be lifted. Barrett was making the case that there was great risk to his city, and he wanted to show me a map he carried with him into the television studio. You can see it here. Because of the amount of data in the file, it takes about 10-15 seconds to present itself.

The map shows the gravity of Milwaukee’s foreclosure crisis. Foreclosed properties are in red. As of last week, there were nearly 2600. Blue represents where the more than 7,000 city employees live. Besides helping stabilize struggling sections of Milwaukee, city employees are the backbone of a number of healthy, middle-class neighborhoods, including Bay View and the southwest, far south, and far west sides. These neighborhoods are home to hundreds of police officers and firefighters. But what happens if, as the Mayor believes, 40 to 50 per cent of those blue dots—city employees—move outside the city? Will there be a dramatic downward pressure on property values?

The Mayor contends the end of residency was a promise Governor Walker made to the Milwaukee police and firefighters unions in an effort to gain their support during his bid for Governor. Walker argues that personal freedom should trump conditions of employment, and that at the end of the day, it’s up to the city to become a more attractive place to live. Neither man knows exactly what will happen should the requirement be eliminated. Nor do they know what Mayor Barrett’s map will look like 10 years from now. But if Barrett is right, it will be a lot less blue, and Milwaukee could be a very different city.

A new report from the UWM Employment and Training Institute shows that Wisconsin leads the nation in incarcerating black males.  Based on data from the 2010 U.S. census, Wisconsin incarcerates about one in every eight of its black men between the ages of 18 and 64.  This includes individuals held in state and local correctional facilities.  The Badger State’s black incarceration rate is, in fact, about one-third higher than that of the second-place state, Oklahoma, and nearly double the national average.

Wisconsin also leads the nation in incarcerating Native-American males, but its white-male incarceration rate (one-tenth of the black rate) closely tracks the national average.  Wisconsin’s Hispanic incarceration rate is actually below the national average.

The Milwaukee County data are particularly striking: more than half of the County’s black males between the ages of 30 and 44 have been or currently are housed in a state correctional institution.

Is this a recent phenomenon?  I’ve taken a look at some historical data on racial disparities for my three-states research.  The following graph indicates that Wisconsin has been above Indiana and Minnesota for some time in black imprisonment (that is, prisoners per 100,000 residents), but that the current wide gap did not really open up until after 1990:  Read more »

A couple of years ago, I was talking with one of the boosters of the effort to brand the Milwaukee area as a global water technology hub. He told me the biggest challenge the initiative would face would be Milwaukee’s inferiority complex, or at least our unwillingness to brag about our assets.

I was reminded of that conversation recently, when the Law School collaborated with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on two major projects. On April 8, we hosted a conference in Eckstein Hall exploring the pros and cons of building a new downtown sports and entertainment facility. Those in attendance heard the president of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce describe how his city had been dramatically transformed by a series of projects that had broad community support. Then, this past Sunday, the newspaper published the first in a four-part series examining the economic future of metropolitan Milwaukee. Called “A Time to Build,” the series was reported by Rick Romell of the Journal Sentinel, under a six-month Law School fellowship established by the Sheldon B. Lubar Fund for Public Policy Research.

As part of that current series on the metro area’s economic prospects, the newspaper created an interactive graphic that allows the reader to compare the nation’s top 50 metropolitan areas. It’s easy to use, and educational, too.

After hearing so much about the Oklahoma City success story, I thought it might be interesting to see how metro Milwaukee stacks up against Oklahoma City in several key categories. It turns out, we do pretty well. We have more college graduates, higher per capita income, and a slightly lower poverty rate. I then added the metropolitan Dallas area to the mix, given Dallas’ reputation as one of the stars of the Sunbelt. Again, the comparison was favorable. Milwaukee and Dallas had remarkably similar numbers in several key indices. The comparative data are available here. Read more »

There was a question mark in the title of Monday’s conference at Marquette University Law School: “A New Milwaukee Sports and Entertainment Arena? Divining the Benefits and Dividing the Costs.”

Six hours of presentations offered a lot of serious discussion, a wide range of perspectives, expert input, comparative experiences from other metropolitan areas, and insights into factors involved in the issue. You could even say there was a broad sense of agreement that it will be good for Milwaukee if the Milwaukee Bucks professional basketball team stays in the city, in that no one favored the team leaving.

But the conference didn’t – and, in reality, surely couldn’t – remove any of the formidable question marks that hang over the futures of the BMO Harris Bradley Center, the Bucks, and a possible new sports and entertainment franchise in Milwaukee. Read more »

A curious thing happened at the end Thursday’s hour-long joint appearance at Eckstein Hall of State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, who wants to reduce the role of the Milwaukee County Board, and County Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic, who is fighting Sanfelippo’s proposals:

A lot of people stayed on to talk. Dimitrijevic talked with whoever came up to her. Sanfelippo did the same. County Executive Chris Abele, who was in the audience, had almost a dozen people gathered around him at some points. Other people lingered and mingled through much of the Appellate Courtroom.

Usually, the room clears pretty quickly at the end of events of this kind. But for some reason – an interest in talking about the issue? the availability of the main figures? the chance to catch up with people? – this was a group that didn’t seem to want to leave. There were probably almost 50 people, out of an audience of more than 200, still in the room 15 minutes after the session ended.

Maybe this was a little bit different way of demonstrating how the public policy programs that Marquette University Law School has been hosting for the last half dozen years are meeting their goals of furthering serious, informed conversation on major issues. The notion of being a crossroads for such a discussion starts with the presenters at these sessions, but it often extends to the informal conversations before a program, during breaks, or afterwards.  Read more »

Ray Papke, my late father, was a maintenance man for Milwaukee Public Schools and proud of it. He had no quarrel with the requirement that City of Milwaukee employees live within the City. He was born in Milwaukee, worked for Milwaukee, and pleased to live in Milwaukee.

Were he alive today, Ray Papke would have opposed Governor Scott Walker’s proposed elimination of residency requirements for City employees, but I can’t imagine him voicing the common arguments against the proposal. To wit, (1) Property values in the city will fall, (2) The City’s racial and ethnic diversity will decline, and (3) People are more effective working for others if they know and live with them.

No, Ray Papke’s position was one based on a more fundamental sense of community, one that literally had a geographic foundation. He lived and worked for this town in this place. This view of social life is of course missing in the Governor’s vision of free-floating individuals who should be able to live wherever they want. It’s also missing in the arguments of the Governor’s opponents, arguments primarily couched with reference to socio-economic concerns and workers’ efficiency.

I fear that the vision of community held dear by Ray Papke was buried along with him and his generation of honest, patriotic, blue-collar Americans. We cannot relive the past, but these Americans were in touch with something that added depth and meaning to their lives.

If Milwaukee is to become a healthy city in both broad terms and in terms of specific issues, it must deal with issues in an honest, constructive way with poverty and race, City of Milwaukee Health Commission Bevan Baker said Thursday during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at Eckstein Hall.

“Milwaukee will not be the greatest, most relevant, healthiest city in America until we deal with our dirty linen,” Baker, health commissioner since 2004, told an audience of about 150.

“To do that,” he continued, “we have got to do what other cities have done, and that is to address race, to address poverty, to look at these issues, and say, it is tough, it is unimaginable, it makes me sick, it is ugly, but to be great we have got to do the unimaginable thing, and that is to once and for all say, and in true fashion, to take our spiritual and moral compass and say, Milwaukee will not be the healthiest, greatest, most relevant city in America until we deal with our dirty linen. That’s what New York has done and that is what Miami is trying to do and that’s what other cities in this nation I have lived in have done.” Read more »

Danae Davis was well along in a distinguished career in executive positions in government and corporations. But she was approaching 50, she felt she needed to do something that had more meaning for her, and she was distressed about the situations of so many young people in Milwaukee.

A friend, Colleen Fitzgerald (now an executive coach for Marquette University), was founder of a small organization that aimed to help central city teenage girls make good decisions about their lives. It was called Pearls for Teen Girls. Fitzgerald suggested to Davis that she become executive director. It paid a lot less than corporate work. But it was exactly the kind of thing Davis was looking for.

That was six years ago. Pearls has grown from serving about 500 girls a year to about 1,100. Davis says she is serious about growing it to 10,000 girls a year. And its track record is impressive – nearly 100% of participating girls who have reached the appropriate age have graduated high school on time and gone on to post-secondary education. Nearly 100% have avoided becoming pregnant.

Davis told Mike Gousha during an “On the Issues” session at Eckstein Hall on Nov. 15 that Pearls is built around small groups of girls ages 10 to 19 who meet weekly for sessions that mix fun with programs focusing on serious issues. The result is a support structure for girls to pursue constructive futures. Read more »