Professor Tracey Meares of Yale Law School will be here on Thursday to deliver the first annual George and Margaret Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law.  Tracey is one of my favorite authors on criminal justice issues, and I am looking forward to hearing what she has to say on a topic that should be of particular interest in Milwaukee: “The Legitimacy of Police Among Young African-American Men.”

Tracey has coauthored a number of publications with her Yale colleague Dan Kahan, who spent a couple days here in the fall as our Boden Lecturer.  In connection with Dan’s visit, I commented here on one of the seminal Meares-Kahan articles.  I expect that Tracey’s talk on Thursday will touch on some of the same themes that were raised in Dan’s exchange with Mike Gousha and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm in October (webcast here).

In addition to the short-term prospect of Tracey’s visit, I am also delighted to know that the Barrock Lecture will provide many future opportunities for us to bring other criminal law luminaries to Marquette.  The lectureship was established through a generous gift from the estate of Mary Barrock Bonfield to honor her parents.  Her father, George, was a Marquette lawyer, Class of 1931.