New Marquette Lawyer Sheds Light on Issues Shaping Today’s World

Marquette Lawyer Cover Summer 2025Marquette Lawyer is not a news magazine, strictly speaking. In fact, there is hardly anything left of news magazines in the United States. But that hardly means there isn’t a lot to learn about what is in the news. And the Summer 2025 issue of Marquette Lawyer certainly provides news in the sense of insights on several major current matters.

Start with Canada. No, we’re not interested in the controversies over making Canada part of the United States or trade policies between the two nations. But we are interested in understanding our neighbor to the north better, especially when it comes to its legal system, which is surely an appropriate focus for those involved in legal education and the law more generally.

That’s what brought the Hon. Suzanne Côté, a justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, to Marquette Law School to present the annual Hallows Lecture last academic year. “Roots of the Living Tree,” an edited version of her lecture, is the cover story of the magazine and offers insights into the premises and practices of Canadian constitutional law. The text may be read by clicking here.

While the Canadian legal system makes infrequent news in the United States, the rapidly developing world of artificial intelligence is in the news often. How to control problems connected to AI, such as false content known as “hallucinations” and copyright infringement, is a timely and important topic.

That brought Reuven Avi-Yonah, the Irwin I. Cohn Professor of Law and director of the International Tax LLM Program at the University of Michigan, here for the annual Robert F. Boden Lecture this past September. Avi-Yonah, one of the world’s most widely respected scholars on tax law, delivered a lecture, “Can Tax Policy Help Us Control Artificial Intelligence?” That became a major piece in this  issue, which may be read by clicking here.

The way Wisconsin handles decisions about setting boundaries for legislative districts has attracted national attention recently. The ups and downs of redistricting decisions have been both influential in shaping power in Wisconsin politics and difficult to follow. John D. Johnson, a researcher with Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, is an expert on redistricting and what it has meant to Wisconsin politics. “The Boundaries of Law and Politics” is his richly detailed article describing the history of the subject. As redistricting continues to be in the news, Johnson’s guide to the subject provides valuable background. It may be read by clicking here.

Another issue that underlies much of the news in today’s world: the quality of judging and judges, from local courts to the highest courts in the land. “In Search of Humbler—and Wiser—Judgments” offers thoughts from Chad M. Oldfather, professor of law at Marquette University. Oldfather’s new book, Judges, Judging, and Judgment: Character, Wisdom, and Humility in a Polarized World, was published by Cambridge University Press. Oldfather also talks about good judgment in legal practice beyond the courtroom in this question-and-answer dialogue. It can be read by clicking here.

Marquette University’s new president, Kimo Ah Yun, has been in the news a lot. In a Lubar Center “Get to Know” program on January 17, 2025, Ah Yun told moderator Derek Mosley, director of the Lubar Center, and an audience of about 200 his powerful personal story, as well as some aspects of his vision for Marquette. The story of his “underdog” rise may be read by clicking here.

Over the years, ways to improve the outcomes of people being released from incarceration has been the subject of several programs at Marquette Law School. In December 2013, for example, Craig Steven Wilder, a professor of American history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was interviewed by Mike Gousha, distinguished fellow in law and public policy, about Wilder’s book on how race and slavery issues were handled by some prominent universities.

In the audience was R. L. McNeely, L’94, a retired professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. At a lunch afterwards for a small group, the conversation turned to Wilder’s involvement in a program aimed at helping educate incarcerated people.

McNeely followed up by starting to work on creating such a program in Wisconsin, involving Marquette and ultimately several other universities. It took years for the idea to become reality, and McNeely, who died in 2020, did not live long enough to see that happen. “From Conversation to Dream to Idea to Reality” describes the origins of the idea and the determination of McNeely and several others, including faculty in Marquette University’s Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, to launch what is now known as the McNeely Prison Education Consortium. The article may be read by clicking here.

“Good Neighbors”—that’s the headline on an article about changes in the immediate vicinity of Eckstein Hall, the Law School’s home. The changes include a new pastor at the Church of the Gesu, Rev. Michael Simone, S.J., and a largescale renovation of sections of the church building; the $42 million renovation and expansion of Straz Hall, making it the new home of the College of Nursing under the continued leadership of Dean Jill Guttormson; and the vision of a new director, John McKinnon, at the Haggerty Museum of Art. The Law School community welcomes all three good neighbors. The article may be read by clicking here.

In early 2025, John T. Chisholm stepped down after 18 years as Milwaukee County district attorney and more than three decades of service in the office and is now a senior lecturer at the Law School. In an essay, “A New Venue for Kindling the Fire for Lawyers to Serve Others,” Chisholm offers his perspective on his new role. It can be read by clicking here.

John Novotny recently retired after almost 20 years working on behalf of the Law School and longer service yet to Marquette University. In remarks at Novotny’s retirement reception, Law School Dean Joseph D. Kearney praised Novotny for more than his success in raising funds. Novotny embodies the vision of Jesuit education, Kearney said. The text of his remarks may be read by clicking here.

In his column, titled “Speaking Just for Myself,” Dean Kearney reflects on his approach to aspects of his office. His column may be read by clicking here.

Finally: the Class Notes describe recent accomplishments of more than 40 Marquette lawyers, including Byron B. Conway, L’02, who was recently sworn in as a federal judge serving the Green Bay Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. The notes may be read by clicking here, and the back cover (here), through two examples, spotlights the impressive record of Marquette law students serving in pro bono and public service roles.

The full magazine may be read by clicking here for the PDF or here for the “interactive” version.

Continue ReadingNew Marquette Lawyer Sheds Light on Issues Shaping Today’s World

Trump is more popular than many of his policies

Many Americans love Donald Trump and even more hate him, but neither of these groups is large enough to win an election by themselves. Except when turnout is low, American elections for the past 9 years have turned with the preferences of those voters whose views of Trump are mixed.

In order to better understand these voters, the Marquette Law School Poll regularly invites a representative sample of American adults to answer the following two simple questions. What do you like about Donald Trump? What do you dislike about him? Respondents can write as much or as little as they want.

The answers to these questions, when paired with traditional multiple-choice items, show a large chunk of the electorate whose attitudes toward the president and broad policy issues, like immigration or trans rights, are malleable. These (potential) voters often hold combinations of views that are rarely found among politicians, making their support for any candidate contingent on issue salience, framing, and whatever ineffable quality makes some candidates seem more trustworthy than the rest.

Our latest poll was in the field in late March, preceding Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcement. Previous installments were fielded a few weeks before and about a month after the inauguration.

At a high level, views of Trump changed little throughout the first three months of his presidency. Shortly before his inauguration, 49% of adults in our polling had a favorable opinion of him. That stood at 44% at the beginning of February and 46% in late March–all changes within the margin of error.

The overall patterns in the open-ended answers haven’t changed much either. In the latest poll, 50% of adults listed something they both like and disliked about Trump. 11% couldn’t name anything they disliked, and 36% couldn’t name anything they liked.

Summary of open-ended survey responses
in the Marquette Law School Poll, national adult sample
Attitude toward Donald Trumpsurvey dates
12/2-11/241/27-2/6/253/17-27/25
Can name likes and dislikes51%47%50%
Doesn’t dislike anything12%14%11%
Doesn’t like anything35%36%36%
no answer2%3%2%

This stability in overall attitude toward Trump doesn’t surprise me. After all, he has been at the center of American politics since his first primary campaign began a decade ago. Few voters lack an opinion of him and much of his behavior is already “priced in.”

But even though attitudes toward Trump himself are fairly stable, if trending a bit downward, opinions toward Trump’s favored policies are all over the place.

In our latest poll, we asked about 10 topics related to Trump’s agenda or recent Supreme Court decisions. The graph below shows the responses to each.

The most popular position across all of these questions was support for the 2020 Supreme Court ruling prohibiting workplace discrimination against “gay and transgender workers.” Eight-two percent of adults agreed with extending federal civil rights law to these workers.

At the same time, 72% of adults hope the Supreme Court upholds a Tennessee law prohibiting “medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication or performing gender transition surgery for youth under 18.”

A large majority, 68%, support the deportation of undocumented immigrants when asked “Do you favor or oppose deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home countries?” When the wording is changed to include, “even if they have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record?” support falls to 41% and opposition rises to 59%.

A decisive share of voters are not consistently “pro” or “anti” trans rights or deportation. Rather, their answers depend on the specific facts included in each question.

graph showing support and opposition for various policies

For each of the above questions, I coded a respondent as “1” if they supported the Trump/conservative position, “-1” if they chose the Democratic/liberal position, and “0” if they declined to take a side. A respondent receives a score of -10 if they took every liberal position and +10 if they always took the conservative side. The graph below shows the distribution of scores for all adults.

Few respondents fell into the most liberal or conservative categories. Forty-two percent are in the most liberal third and 31% are in the most conservative third of possible scores. Twenty-six percent of adults fell in the middle, with scores reflecting a mixture of support for conservative or liberal policies.

It is the open-ended answers from this last group that give insight into the views and beliefs of the most persuadable section of the electorate.

net ideological score of support and opposition for various policies

Click here to access our tool for viewing randomized responses to our open-ended questions. The tool allows you to filter responses by the respondent’s degree of support or opposition to Trump’s policies.

screenshot of interactive tool
Continue ReadingTrump is more popular than many of his policies

The Partisan Implications of ‘Low Turnout’ Have Flipped in Wisconsin

There’s a growing conventional wisdom that the two parties have flipped in their relationship to voter turnout. Now, it seems, Democrats are strongest in lower-turnout elections and Republicans do best when turnout is highest.

This is a real paradigm shift from not too long ago. During the Obama years, Democrats enjoyed a clear majority among potential voters broadly defined, but this majority depended on the adults least likely to participate. Republicans, on the other hand, had great strength with the most regular voters. For this reason, Obama could handily win Wisconsin (and the nation) in 2008 and 2012, but the Republican Tea Party wave dominated in 2010.

Here are a few more interesting data points in support of that emerging conventional wisdom.

Turnout always drops from a presidential election to the following gubernatorial election two years later, but the size of the decline varies from place to place. I was curious: does the decline in voter turnout correlate with changes in vote margin?

To answer this, I ran a regression comparing each municipality’s change in voter turnout with the change in vote margin between elections for president and governor.

The results are striking. In 2002, 2006, and 2010, a 1% decline in voter turnout from the previous presidential election predicted a more than 0.1 increase in the Republican vote margin for governor. This advantage dwindled in 2014 and reversed in 2018 and 2022.

In both of Tony Evers’ elections, a 1% decline in voter turnout predicted a significant increase in support for Evers, relative to Trump in the same municipality two years earlier.

graph showing the influence of a 1% decline in voter turnout from the previous presidential election on gubernatorial vote margins

The same dynamic affects Supreme Court races. The people most likely to show up in an April nonpartisan election are older, highly educated, and more wealthy. These demographics used to lean Republican; now they lean Democratic.

In April 2025, the liberal candidate Susan Crawford won 55% of the vote to conservative Brad Schimel’s 45%. Recall that in November 2024, Trump received 50% of the vote to Harris’ 49% in Wisconsin.

All the evidence I’ve seen shows that Crawford’s improvement over Harris is mostly due to who showed up. A survey from Blueprint Research found that 52% of voters in April 2025 had voted for Harris the previous November, and 46% had voted for Trump. Likewise, the researchers at Split Ticket analyzed ward-level election results and concluded, “roughly 70% of Susan Crawford’s win margin was attributable to changes in who was voting, rather than changes in how people voted.”

Here’s an example of all these trends taken from my hometown, the City of Milwaukee.

This graph shows that in the early 2000s, Democrats did best in presidential elections, a little worse in gubernatorial elections, and much worse in elections for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

In 2002, the Democratic candidate for governor won Milwaukee by 39 points, and in 2004 the Democratic presidential candidate won it by 44. Right in between those two elections, in 2003, the conservative candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court outright won the City of Milwaukee by 5 points.

line graph showing margins among city of Milwaukee voters in races for president, governor, and WI supreme court

Since the early 2000s, things have changed. Democratic presidential margins in the city topped out at 60 points in 2012. Since then, they’ve dwindled slightly. Democratic candidates for governor have just kept climbing. Evers’ margin in 2018 matched Clinton’s share in 2016. But Evers’ Milwaukee margin of victory in 2022 reached heights not even achieved by Barack Obama.

The increase in support for liberal supreme court candidates among Milwaukee voters has been even more spectacular. Liberal candidates were consistently winning the City of Milwaukee by the 2010s, but in 2016, the liberal candidate still trailed Hillary Clinton by 34 points. In 2020, the liberal Court candidate trailed Biden by just 7 points among Milwaukee voters. In 2025, the liberal judicial candidate’s margin of victory exceeded Harris’ 2024 margin by 11 points.

Something fundamental changed in the years following Trump’s first election. Now, the smaller the electorate in Milwaukee, the more liberal it seems to be.

Continue ReadingThe Partisan Implications of ‘Low Turnout’ Have Flipped in Wisconsin