Alan J. Borsuk – Page 25 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Insights and Anecdotes from an American Sports Legend, Bud Selig

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:August 29, 2019
Post category:Public Speakers at Marquette Sports & Law

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.

Franklin Says Poll Results Show Shift Toward Republican Identification

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:April 10, 2019
Post category:Marquette Law School Poll Public

There’s something happening here, and what it is is becoming clearer: A shift in the overall partisan make-up of Wisconsin’s voting population toward Republicans.

It’s not a huge shift – a couple percentage point increase in the number of people who identify as Republicans or as leaning Republican, a similar decrease in the number who identify as Democrats or as leaning Democratic. The result is a near tie in partisanship, compared to several years ago when the Democrats held a slight advantage. But it is enough of a change to suggest that the polarized political make-up of Wisconsin is becoming more polarized, and the state’s propensity to have elections with very close outcomes may be getting stronger.

Chief Justice Roberts: Biskupic Describes Her Insightful Look at a Reserved Figure

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:April 9, 2019
Post category:Federal Law & Legal System Public Speakers at Marquette U.S. Supreme Court

Joan Biskupic says her fourth book about a member of the United States Supreme Court involved “my most difficult subject” – Chief Justice John Roberts. But, perhaps in good part for that reason, it is also attracting much attention.

Roberts is “a very reserved individual,” Biskupic said during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program in the Lubar Center at Marquette Law School on Tuesday. “There’s a lot that you see, but much more that’s held back.” She had the benefit of eight interviews, covering more than twenty hours, with Roberts, but she said she wonders still about what is not known about him.

However, Biskupic’s newly-published biography, The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts, does offer a lot, some of it not reported previously, about Roberts, who has been chief justice since 2005.

And in addition to a richly detailed description of Roberts’ life, the book breaks new ground in describing how Roberts came to be the decisive vote in upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, often known as Obamacare, in 2012. Biskupic describes how he initially took positions opposing the constitutionality of the law during the court’s work on the case, then switched his views.

“I think he definitely did not want the whole law to go down,” she said. “I’m fine with saying I don’t know why, for sure.”