Alan J. Borsuk – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Patrick Sharkey: Keep the Police, but Add a Corps of Problem Solvers

By: Alan J. BorsukJuly 23, 2020Public, Race & Law, Speakers at Marquette1 Comment

Police are effective in reducing violence, according to Patrick Sharkey. “When there are more police on the street, there’s less violence, and we have very good evidence on that,” Sharkey said during a virtual “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program on July 22.

But that is only part of what is needed to make communities safe, Sharkey said. The reliance on police to deal with safety in urban areas has left big inequalities and needs unaddressed. That’s one of the key factors behind the enormous wave of protests since the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in May.

So Sharkey, a professor of sociology and urban affairs at Princeton University and an expert on the value of community efforts in increasing safety, has been calling in places such as the Washington Post and New York Times, for bold experiments in new ways to help neighborhoods.

That led to Sharkey’s online conversation with Gousha, Marquette Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy. Sharkey has done consulting in Milwaukee in recent years and has visited Marquette Law School twice previously. Continue reading “Patrick Sharkey: Keep the Police, but Add a Corps of Problem Solvers”

New County Executive Remains Confident in Good Days Ahead for Milwaukee

By: Alan J. BorsukJune 10, 2020Milwaukee, Public, Speakers at MarquetteLeave a comment»

As new Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley was being interviewed for an online “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program this week, viewers could see a message board behind Crowley with the phrase, “It’s a good day to have a good day.”

When Gousha, Marquette Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy, asked Crowley about it, Crowley said it was a motto in his family and he described himself as an optimist – in fact, he said, some say he is “recklessly optimistic.”

He maintained that tone, even as he discussed the enormous problems he faces in the job he won in the April 7 election. Milwaukee County government continues to struggle with large financial stresses and increasing demands for services. Add on the crises that Crowley faced the day he took office – responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the sharp economic slump that resulted – and the urgent issues that arouse in late May in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and it would be easy to guess Crowley’s optimism had declined.

Crowley told Gousha that the crises have “exacerbated what we knew we needed in Milwaukee” and have made progress more difficult. “But we’ll be able to move this community even further” as the issues are addressed, he said. Continue reading “New County Executive Remains Confident in Good Days Ahead for Milwaukee”

The Washington, D.C., Issue of the Marquette Lawyer Magazine

By: Alan J. BorsukJune 1, 2020Marquette Law School Poll, Marquette Lawyer Magazine, Milwaukee Area Project, Public, U.S. Supreme CourtLeave a comment»

2020 Summer Cover

Amid all the global disruptions that started in March, Marquette Law School moved forward effectively in teaching students to be lawyers and in offering, as best we could, the public engagement we are known for. One important aspect of the latter is the release of the new issue of the Marquette Lawyer magazine, produced with a few internal procedural adjustments, but no change in schedule or in our commitment to provide high-quality reading to Marquette lawyers, all lawyers in Wisconsin, and many interested others.

Washington, D.C., is the focus of the new issue. The Washington that’s in Continue reading “The Washington, D.C., Issue of the Marquette Lawyer Magazine “

Trying to Strike Some Optimistic Notes Amid the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Alan J. BorsukMay 21, 2020Health Care, Milwaukee, Public, Speakers at MarquetteLeave a comment»

Can you offer a note of optimism when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Mike Gousha, Marquette Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy, asked Jeanette Kowalik, the health commissioner of the City of Milwaukee, that question at the end of an online “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” interview on Wednesday, May 20.

Kowalik tried, but it was a challenge to put a cheerful face on the impact the virus is having on Milwaukee and most of the world.

“Definitely what’s happening right now is like Haley’s comet,“ she said. It was hard to anticipate “something at this level” as a health crisis, she said, saying the United States as a whole was experiencing “these astronomical numbers” of confirmed cases and deaths.

The only option now is to continue social and physical distancing and use personal protective equipment such as face masks, Kowalik said, while awaiting development and widespread use of a vaccine to deal with the virus. Continue reading “Trying to Strike Some Optimistic Notes Amid the COVID-19 Crisis”

Latest Marquette Lawyer Magazine Offers Thoughts on Navigating Careers in the Law

By: Alan J. BorsukDecember 23, 2019December 23, 2019PublicLeave a comment»

Marquette Lawyer Fall Cover Navigating your path as a lawyer—the new Marquette Lawyer magazine offers approaches to how you might do that.

The cover story, “Practicing Business Law at the Speed of Change,” includes insights from more than 15 lawyers whose work—together with that of their clients—is being shaped every day by advances in technology. Leaders of major firms, experts in the field, and lawyers at various stages in their careers describe how developments from the daily technology everyone uses (such as e-mail) to the most high-tech of today’s changes (blockchain, for example) are affecting legal practice. Click here to read the story.

Paired with the cover story is a profile of Ray Manista, L’90, whose titles at Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual include executive vice president – chief legal officer. Manista describes how “changing labels” has been a key to his successful career. He was a litigator at a large Milwaukee firm but “changed labels” to become a member of the legal team at Northwestern Mutual. Several years later, he changed labels again to become involved in corporate leadership. “To be truly effective, I had to lose the labels,” Manista says. To read his story, click here.

Lee H. Rosenthal, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, chose a thought-provoking subject about career paths when she delivered the E. Harold Hallows Lecture at Marquette Law School this past spring. “Ambition and Aspiration: Living Greatly in the Law” offers an essay version of her lecture on what priorities should guide members of the profession. Rosenthal’s remarks are accompanied in the magazine by responses from eight lawyers, judges, and professors: namely, Diane S. Sykes, Darren Bush, Suzanna Sherry, Chad M. Oldfather, Nancy Joseph, Anna Fodor, Anne Berleman Kearney, and Peter K. Rofes. To read the full story, click here.

Continue reading “Latest Marquette Lawyer Magazine Offers Thoughts on Navigating Careers in the Law”

Fresh Thoughts on How to Close the Pre-Kindergarten Learning Gap

By: Alan J. BorsukDecember 9, 2019March 25, 2020Lubar Center, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Project, Public, Speakers at MarquetteLeave a comment»

(This is a lightly-edited version of a column I wrote for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that ran in the Dec. 8, 2019, print edition.)

Dana Suskind is a surgeon at the University of Chicago whose specialty is providing kids who have little or no hearing with high-tech cochlear implants that allow them to hear much better. But she noticed about a decade ago that some of her young patients had much better outcomes than others after receiving the implants.

“It was a really painful experience to watch” kids who now could hear but weren’t thriving. She worked to find the reason. Her conclusion: The problem “had less to do with their hearing loss and more to do with the environment into which they were born.” Generally, their lives were shaped by poverty, instability, high stress and limited exposure to experiences that are intellectually and emotionally beneficial.

Much the same is true for millions of children who are born with normal hearing. By the time they reach kindergarten, they are nowhere near as ready for school as children who with better lots in their early years.

Suskind became founder and co-director of a project called Thirty Million Words. The name came from a study from several decades ago that concluded that, by the time they reached school age, low-income children had heard 30 million fewer words in every-day conversation than children from higher income homes. This limited their educational readiness. Continue reading “Fresh Thoughts on How to Close the Pre-Kindergarten Learning Gap”

Conference Gives Milwaukee a Good — But Not Great — Progress Report as a Water Hub

By: Alan J. BorsukNovember 7, 2019March 25, 2020Lubar Center, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Project, Public, Speakers at Marquette, Water LawLeave a comment»

Ten years ago, Marquette Law School sponsored a conference, “Milwaukee 2015: Water, Jobs, and the Way Forward.” Speakers at the conference, including Wisconsin’s then-Gov. Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, put forward a vision of Milwaukee becoming a world leader in water expertise with a Milwaukee area economy boosted by an influx of water-based jobs and companies.

On Nov. 5, 2019, a decade later almost to the day, the Law School convened a follow up conference (titled “Milwaukee 2025: Water, Jobs, and the Way Forward”) with some of the same speakers, as well as others, to ask how things have been going and what lies ahead.

How would you rate Milwaukee’s record on becoming a water hub? Mayor Barrett responded that the area has moved in the right direction. “I won’t give us an A plus, I’ll give us a solid B for moving in that direction,” he said. “We have changed the perception of Milwaukee in a significant way in the last 10 years.”

Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell, a major proponent of the emphasis on water, said the goal in 2009 was to make Milwaukee a global center of excellence for all things related to water, “something like the CDC for water,” a reference to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lovell said, “We have not gotten there yet; we are still striving to do so.” Milwaukee should be proud of what has been done, including the creation of The Water Council, the Global Water Center, and the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Lovell said. Continue reading “Conference Gives Milwaukee a Good — But Not Great — Progress Report as a Water Hub”

Tommy Thompson Told His Daughter to Try Being a Public Defender –and It Launched Her Career

By: Alan J. BorsukOctober 29, 2019October 30, 2019Criminal Law & Process, Public, Speakers at Marquette, Wisconsin Criminal Law & ProcessLeave a comment»

Kelli Thompson admits she wasn’t entirely eager to become a lawyer, particularly the kind involved in courtroom work. As a student at Marquette Law School, “I probably did a very, very good job of staying far, far away from any kind of trial advocacy or litigation type of class. I think my thought was I would get the J.D. behind my name and just do something else. The something else, I have no idea what that was going to be.”

But, she said during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Eckstein Hall on October 15, 2019, “In my third year of law school, I think it was killing my father that I was not even considering going into a courtroom.”

Her father, by the way, is Tommy G. Thompson, who, at that time in the mid-1990s, was governor of Wisconsin.

Kelli Thompson recalled, “At that point in time, he certainly wasn’t pushy, but he said, ‘Before you decide you hate it (courtroom work), you at least have to try it.’ . . . He said Marquette has wonderful clinical programs.” He told his daughter to pick one. “I said, ‘OK, you pick for me because I don’t know what I want to do’ . . . He said, ‘There’s no doubt, public defender, you should go there.’

So she did. “I can say quite honestly, after my first couple of days, I was hooked,” Kelli Thompson said. Continue reading “Tommy Thompson Told His Daughter to Try Being a Public Defender –and It Launched Her Career”

Bradley Foundation Chief Describes Its Conservative Philosophy and Grant Making

By: Alan J. BorsukOctober 18, 2019October 22, 2019Milwaukee, Political Processes & Rhetoric, Public, Speakers at MarquetteLeave a comment»

As Rick Graber sees it, the Bradley Foundation operates “in a world of ideas, and we fund people who are in the world of ideas.”

That’s one way to describe the work of the Milwaukee-based foundation. But it is important to add a few things to that description: The Bradley Foundation is huge – it has an endowment of about $900 million and it makes grants of $40 to $50 million a year. It is influential – it has provided funding sparking big changes in American policy since it was launched in the mid-1980s. And it is conservative – its leaders have never hesitated in using that label to describe its support of limited government, free markets, traditional values, and other conservative causes. One of its signature issues is support of programs allowing parents to send their children to private and religious schools using public money.

Graber, president and CEO of Bradley since 2016, told an audience at an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Marquette Law School on Thursday, October 17, that the foundation tries to do what two brothers, Harry and Lynda Bradley, would want them to do. The two were founders of the Allen-Bradley Co., and they were supporters of conservative causes. Both died more than a half century ago and the foundation is funded out of some of the proceeds of the sale of Allen-Bradley in the 1980s. Continue reading “Bradley Foundation Chief Describes Its Conservative Philosophy and Grant Making”

Speakers Call for Criminal Justice Reform, Starting with Prosecutors

By: Alan J. BorsukSeptember 27, 2019Criminal Law & Process, Public, Race & Law, Speakers at MarquetteLeave a comment»

Paul Butler refers to himself as “a recovering prosecutor.” A native of the south side of Chicago, he graduated from Harvard Law School, clerked for a judge, and went into private practice. He became a federal prosecutor with the hope he would part of solving problems in the criminal justice system that lead to so many people being incarcerated, especially African American men. He concluded that, as a prosecutor, he was part of the problem and not the solution. He left the job and is now the Albert Brick Professor of Law at Georgetown University and an advocate for major reform of the criminal justice system.

In two programs at Marquette Law School on Sept. 25, 2019, Butler called for major changes in the system. In an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program, he and John Chisholm, the Milwaukee County district attorney, focused particularly on the role of prosecutors. Continue reading “Speakers Call for Criminal Justice Reform, Starting with Prosecutors”

Education Is Key to Broader Economic Success for Milwaukee Hispanics, Speakers Say

By: Alan J. BorsukSeptember 19, 2019Milwaukee, Public, Speakers at MarquetteLeave a comment»

Consider three pieces of data that shed light on the economic potential and the challenges of Milwaukee’s Hispanic population:

The population of the Milwaukee area has been generally unchanged since 2000 – except for the significant growth of the Hispanic population in the area.

Hispanic people are over-represented in low-paying jobs and under-represented in high-paying jobs in greater Milwaukee.

By a variety of measures, there have been positive trends in educational success for Hispanics in the Milwaukee area, but it continues to be the case that smaller percentages have college degrees than people from other demographic groups. Continue reading “Education Is Key to Broader Economic Success for Milwaukee Hispanics, Speakers Say”

Insights and Anecdotes from an American Sports Legend, Bud Selig

By: Alan J. BorsukAugust 29, 2019Public, Speakers at Marquette, Sports & LawLeave a comment»

Do Milwaukeeans – or at least enough Milwaukeeans – appreciate what an amazing figure Bud Selig is? Not only in terms of changing baseball, but in terms of changing things that are now big parts of the fabric of American culture?

As Selig often says, baseball is a social institution. It’s a key part of American culture. The game is not called the national pastime without good reason.

Major league baseball today is a far different game than it was, say, 40 years ago. And Selig, who grew up on the west side of Milwaukee and took a hard-to-imagine route to become the commissioner of baseball from 1992 to 2015, has been at the center of just about every change. Continue reading “Insights and Anecdotes from an American Sports Legend, Bud Selig”