That’s the Way It Was — and Is

When I was studying journalism at UW-Madison, we would sometimes end our day at Vilas Hall by grabbing a cold one at a nearby tavern on University Avenue. Bob and Gene’s is no longer there, but a particular memory remains. One of the television sets at the bar was tuned each night to the CBS Evening News, and when anchorman Walter Cronkite came on the air, the place got quiet and remained that way until Cronkite’s signature standoff: “and that’s the way it is.” On the heels of Watergate and a long war that threatened to tear the nation apart, there was a sense that we had witnessed history. We witnessed history again in Wisconsin last year, and this time it threatened to tear the state apart. One year ago—June 5—Wisconsin went to the polls in the recall election for Governor. The protests of 2011 had been replaced by a political movement aimed at ousting Governor Scott Walker from office. It was an election that divided not just Republicans and Democrats, but friends and families, some of whom simply stopped talking about politics rather than run the risk of a nasty argument. Bitter and contentious, there was little middle ground. In the waning days of the race between Governor Scott Walker and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (a rematch of 2010), the Law School found itself in the middle of the fray. We released our final Marquette Law School Poll of the election cycle, showing Governor Walker leading by seven points (ultimately, his margin of victory). The Law School also played host to the final debate of the campaign. As I moderated the event, I was struck not only by the sharpness of the exchanges between Barrett and Walker, but how the evening had a certain rhythm to it, each candidate giving as good as he got. The two men knew each other well. They had done this several times before, and their familiarity along with their fundamentally different visions for the state produced an hour of compelling conversation. But I also remember the overwhelming silence in a packed Eckstein Hall when both Barrett and Walker would briefly pause to collect their thoughts. Intense doesn’t begin to describe it. When Election Day was over, Scott Walker had won. Again. And life went on in Wisconsin. So what has happened in the year since the historic recall? In some ways, the debate seems remarkably familiar. We’re still arguing over jobs numbers and the performance of the state’s economy. According to our latest Law School poll, the Governor’s job approval rating remains about the same, slightly more positive than negative. But one fact is beyond dispute: Wisconsin continues to undergo a rapid and fundamental transformation, one that could change its future course for not only years, but decades. With Republicans in control in Madison, the state is quickly moving away from its progressive past, plotting a future built on a philosophy of lower taxes, less government assistance, fewer regulations, and more school choice.…

Continue ReadingThat’s the Way It Was — and Is

Adam’s Rib as an Historical Document: The Plight of Women Lawyers in the 1940s

In a recent post, Professor Lisa Mazzie offered her observations on the 1949 film classic, Adam’s Rib, which stars Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy as husband-and-wife attorneys who end up on opposite sides of the same murder case. Like Professor Mazzie, I have long been fascinated with the movie, especially as an historical document. Trying to figure out what it is that Adam’s Rib has to say about women and the legal profession in the 1940’s turns out to be a bit perplexing. Does it endorse the idea that women make just as good attorneys as men, or is it merely just a celebration of the uniqueness of Hepburn’s character? Although you would not necessarily discern this from the movie itself, Adam's Rib was filmed at a time in which the role of women in the legal profession was apparently changing in significant ways. In an era when very few women went to law school and even fewer practiced law, the 1940’s were, thanks to World War II, a decade of expanded opportunities for women in the legal profession. Unfortunately, this expansion turned out to be quite temporary. In 1940, there were only 4,447 female attorneys in the United States, at least as identified by the United States Census. As such, these “Portias” accounted for only 2.4% of all lawyers. By 1950, the number of women lawyers had risen by almost 50%, to a total of 6,348, which amounted to 3.5% of lawyers generally. The number of female law students showed a similar increase during the decade. In 1940, there were just 690 female students at American Bar Association accredited law schools; in 1950, the total had nearly doubled to 1,364. Of course, the number of women lawyers remained quite small, but for a few years during the middle of the decade, woman seemed poised to play a far more significant role in the profession than they had in the prewar world. The massive military call up of American males after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, created an immediate void in American law schools. As enrollments declined precipitously, a number of ambitious women were able to take advantage of the sudden need for students. By 1942, the percentage of law students who were female had jumped from 4.35% of all law students just two years earlier to 11.7%. By 1943, the percentage had increased to 21.9%. While it is true that much of the percentage increase was the result of the departure of male students which made for a much smaller denominator, the number of female students at ABA-accredited law schools exceeded 1,000 for the first time in 1943. By 1947, the number of was over 1400. The War also created new opportunities in the workplace, especially in corporate law firms in major cities which faced a serious shortage of lawyers. Many Wall Street firms began employing women attorneys for the first time after a year of scrambling to find adequate substitutes for male lawyers drafted into…

Continue ReadingAdam’s Rib as an Historical Document: The Plight of Women Lawyers in the 1940s

Superman and the Rule of Law

This month (June 2013) marks the 75th anniversary of the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1.  Although he has been imitated many times, Superman, a/k/a Clark Kent, the surviving son of the exploded planet Krypton, remains the archetype of the comic book superhero.  Literary critics and cultural theorists as noted as Umberto Eco and Scott Bukatman have long ruminated on his significance. (If you doubt this, see Eco, “The Myth of Superman,” Diacritics, Spring 1972; Scott Bukatman, Matters of Gravity (2004).) For most of the past 75 years, Superman has been held up as a symbol of the fairness of the American system.  After all, at least since the debut of the Adventures of Superman television show in 1951, he has been committed to fighting for “truth, justice, and the American Way.”  However, upon closer analysis, the relationship between Superman, justice, and law has never as straightforward as it appeared in the middle of the twentieth century. To begin with, in his earliest comic book appearances in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, the Man of Steel usually operated more as a vigilante than a law enforcement official.  Although he once emphasized the importance of formal legal procedures while staring down a lynch mob, in confrontations with corrupt public officials, racketeers, wife-beaters, gangsters, and wartime profiteers, the early Superman was much more direct in his efforts to see that justice was done.  When an innocent man was wrongly convicted, Superman, like the heroes of western movies, had no reservations about interfering with the judicial process to make sure that justice was done. In these early years, Superman was quite willing to intimidate and even use the threat of being hurled off the top of a tall building to force wrong-doers to come forward and admit to their crimes.  Sometimes, it appeared that he was inflicting the punishment himself.  Although Superman is never shown actually killing anyone in the early comics, he frequently attacked his opponents with such physical force that they must have been severely injured if not killed as a result.  Rather than simply stand stationary and watch bullets bounce of his chest (as he would do later), he would teach wrongdoers a lesson by picking them up and hurling them across the room where they smashed into an unmovable wall.  This Superman clearly placed ideas of popular justice ahead of legal niceties.  (In Action Comics #1, one of the bad guys is a United States Senator, and Superman clearly shows no special respect for the office.) During World War II, Superman began to change.  For instance, he sold war bonds, which was not a very vigilante thing to do.  The postwar Superman was also different in his approach.  His focus increasingly became more on the apprehension of criminals than the elimination of injustice.  He was less a righter of wrongs than a defender of the established order. After 1940, the costumed-crime fighter took an oath never to kill anyone or anything, and he dutifully allowed wrong-doers to…

Continue ReadingSuperman and the Rule of Law