Welcome to the New Year, fellow Marquette Law students and faculty! I am pleased and proud to be writing to you as the student blogger of the month for January. I’ll hopefully contribute something useful to you all over these 31 days and nights as we venture into the great unknown that is 2014.

It seems apt to talk about the years ahead and behind as we mark the beginning of the former and the closing of the latter. For 2014, the economy appears to be finally heating up, and 2014 looks to be more like a Ferrari than a Fiat, and that is something to celebrate. There are exciting issues heading to or being considered by the Supreme Court, including recess appointments, contraceptive mandates for religious non-profits, and gun rights. Even the Circuit Courts are getting a lot of attention as we see splits forming in the handling of bulk collection of phone call data by the NSA. Congress actually closed out 2013 in the spirit of cooperation by passing a budget sans major tantrums on the Senate floor. I’ll be graduating this calendar year, marking the end of my formal education, and my cell phone contract is up, so there’s that. I wish us all luck and success in the coming year as students look for summer placements and graduating 3L’s look for permanent positions.