Lessons in the Law and Civic Life

Fall 2025 Magazine CoverWhat should be the goal of a law school? Obviously, educating students to be excellent lawyers is at the core. But the life of a law school goes far beyond the walls of a building and what happens in classrooms.

The Fall 2025 issue of the Marquette Lawyer magazine gives insights into how far the reach of a law school can and should extend. From the dignified proceedings of appellate courts to the sometimes-contentious atmosphere of school board meetings, from the harsh insides of prisons to the world of water policy, from kindergarten through twelfth-grade classrooms to enjoyable vacations—they’re all part of this issue. And there’s plenty more about life inside Marquette Law School and legal education.

The cover story of the magazine, headlined “Courts or Community Conversations?,” sets the theme. In his E. Harold Hallows Lecture at Marquette Law School on March 3, 2025, the Hon. Michael Y. Scudder, a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, discussed some of the constitutional limits on bringing issues before federal courts. He expanded on this by suggesting that constitutional limits on jurisdiction protect First Amendment interests and the value of democratic self-government, ensuring that state institutions such as city councils and school boards remain at the center of debate and decision.

The magazine offers a text of Scudder’s lecture and amplifies on his theme with two companion pieces: Professor Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll, provides insights from recent Marquette Law School Poll results on the involvement of people across the nation in civic life, including participation in government, religious, and community organizations. And, in an edited transcript of their conversations in person and by email, Scudder and Franklin reflect on broad issues of involvement in civic life.

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Eleven Thoughts on Making the Work of K–12 Teachers More Successful

People Falling with Hand outreachedThe Fall 2024 Marquette Lawyer magazine included essays looking at the broad question of why so much K–12 education reform brings so little progress. If I do say so myself (and I was much involved), it was a provocative and thoughtful discussion.

In the end, one sentence stood out to me and others involved in planning programs at Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote, “What if, instead of pulling policy levers, we redirected the reform movement’s energy and enthusiasm toward improving classroom practice?”

Well, what if? Pondiscio argued that better training of teachers and steps to lighten the workload of teachers would open paths to better results. He said too much is being expected of many teachers now. He advocated particularly for providing teachers in many subjects high-quality curricular materials so they don’t have to spend large amount of time developing lessons plans and can focus on actual teaching and connecting with students.

To advance the conversation, Marquette Law School, teaming with the Marquette College of Education, hosted an in-person forum on May 8, 2025, titled “Focusing K–12 Education Reform on Teaching Efforts.” Before an audience in the Lubar Center of more than 100, including a number of leaders in Wisconsin education, Pondiscio expanded on his thinking; Sarah Almy, chief of external affairs for the National Council on Teacher Quality, offered additional perspective; and a panel of Wisconsin educators offered their thoughts.

We intend to pursue this important conversation in further events and in the Marquette Lawyer magazine. For the moment, let me offer a set of thoughts from the conference’s speakers.

Pondiscio on the teaching workforce overall: With about 3.7 million K–12 teachers nationwide, it is unrealistic to expect the large majority to be “saints and superstars.” The large majority, he said, are people who want to be good teachers but are, for one reason or another, more middle-of-the-pack in their work. But, he said, they could become more successful. “That’s why I come back to raising not the level of teacher quality, but of quality teaching—making this job doable by the teachers we have and not by the teachers we wish we had.”

Pondiscio on reducing the burden on teachers who often must deal with duties that go beyond actual teaching: “Something’s got to come off the teacher’s plate. And the most obvious thing to me is curriculum. . . . Somebody else can write the curriculum. Nobody else can give feedback, get to know the kids, etc. So that one basic shift alone would probably make a difference.”

Pondiscio, when asked who will do all the non-teaching things teachers do now: “I don’t know what the answer is, but I know what the answer is not. It’s not asking Miss Jones to do it. . . . This is about making teaching easier and doable.”

Pondiscio on the education reform movement in recent years: Some reformers wanted to “beat teachers up—you know, ‘look at these terrible teachers, they’re lazy.’ A lot of us in education reform said, ‘just fire bad teachers and all will be well.’” In fact, he said, teachers were not “the sinners,” but “the sinned against,” by being put in positions where they faced unreasonable demands and were not trained well. “The teachers are not the bad guys here. When teachers know what to do, they’re not that bad.”

Almy on the gap between policy and practice in education: “I think a lot of times we really fall down on translating policy into implementation and practice. . . . I think we put a lot of energy, whether it’s at the state level or the district level, into getting the policy passed and the political pieces of that. And then everyone takes a sigh of relief and sort of assumes a lot of this will translate at the classroom level.” But pushing waves of reform onto teachers and local school leaders often means that things don’t change “because the classroom door closes and the teacher does whatever the teacher’s going to do.”

Almy on teacher-training programs, a major focus of her organization: “We need to stop putting all of the onus on training teachers on the districts, and we need to ensure that we’re holding our teacher-prep programs to really high expectations.”

Taylor Thompson, a first-year first-grade teacher from Oshkosh who has used a literacy curriculum called Core Knowledge Language Arts: “CKLA has actually given me a clear, structured path that supports my teaching and my students’ learning . . . . That structure has allowed me to focus on how we are teaching things, rather than spending hours worrying and figuring out what we are teaching.”

Maggy Olson, director of equity and instruction for the Greendale School District in suburban Milwaukee, on those who say education is not succeeding: “I think so often in education that is the narrative: ‘It’s impossible.’ It is, ‘teachers are failing, kids are failing, our schools are failing, it’s a mess.’ I want to say that is absolutely false. . . . Our schools are not failing. They’re doing more than they’ve ever done before.”

Kanika Burks, chief schools officer for Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, a Milwaukee charter school, on the obligation of administrators to support teachers: Administrators need to “pay attention to the heart of the people that are in front of you. . . . If the person who is in front of our young people is not healthy, if their heart is breaking, if they are breaking down, they are not going to be the most effective person regardless of the curriculum and the faith in them.”

Cynthia Ellwood, a Marquette University College of Education faculty member, on striking a balance between curriculum and teacher presentation: “It’s not just a matter of going out there and finding the perfect material. I don’t think it boils down to a single approach to curriculum [or other factors]. . . . We must know that every single one of our students is capable of high intellectual thought, that they are capable of seeing themselves as intellectuals. And what we’re doing right now is not building pathways so that every child is offered this incredible challenging curriculum and the appropriate supports that make it possible for them to succeed.”

Olson on the future: “Is there hope? Yes, there is so much hope in our children and our educators. Right now, we are in a very dark place. I would argue that we are not in a tomb, we are in a womb, and we’re ready to be reborn. . . . . Hope is in the work that we have moving forward.”

The in-print symposium in the fall 2024 Marquette Lawyer magazine may be read by clicking here (online version) or here (PDF).

Video of the May 8 program at Eckstein Hall may be viewed by clicking here.

Continue ReadingEleven Thoughts on Making the Work of K–12 Teachers More Successful

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
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