Marquette Law Student Theresa Fallon Serving as ABA Law Student Division Liaison for the Dispute Resolution Section

I recently learned that Theresa Fallon, a 2L, was appointed by the ABA to serve as Liaison to the Section on Dispute Resolution for 2009-2010.  You can see a list naming Theresa and the other liaison appointees here.  Student liaisons to ABA entities such as the Dispute Resolution Section work to “serve as a line of communication between [their] respective entit[ies], Law Student Division, Division Circuits, and local law schools,” according to the front page of the Liaison website.

The competition for the liaison positions is tough, and it is an honor for Theresa to have been chosen.  In this position, Theresa will attend the section’s meetings and get to know its leadership, helping it to understand and serve the needs of law students.  She will also attend meetings for the ABA Law Student Division in the Seventh Circuit.  The liaison position is a wonderful opportunity for Theresa to make connections, serve the profession, and represent Marquette University Law School in national legal circles.

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Correlation Between Number of Questions the Justices Ask and Losing Your United States Supreme Court Case

The New York Times has published a story about some studies showing a strong correlation between the number of questions the Supreme Court justices ask a particular litigant during oral argument and an increased likelihood that that side will lose.  In the words of the attorney who did some of the first work on this question while she was a still a law student,

“The bottom line, as simple as it sounds,” said the student, Sarah Levien Shullman, who is now a litigation associate at a law firm in Florida, “is that the party that gets the most questions is likely to lose.”

Shullman only studied ten cases, but, the article reports, Chief Justice Roberts confirmed the result in his own, larger study while he was a circuit court judge.  

A recent, much more thorough study, accepted for publication in the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy, seems to prove the correlation exists.  From the abstract,

This paper tests whether Supreme Court justices tip their hands at oral arguments. Specifically, we test whether, when justices ask more questions of one side, that side is more likely to lose their case. The findings support the theory; namely, when justices ask more questions of the petitioner’s attorney the Court is significantly less likely to reverse the lower court decision.

The NYT remarks that Chief Justice Roberts “sounded both fascinated and a little deflated by the results of his experiment. ‘The secret to successful advocacy,’ he said playfully, ‘is simply to get the court to ask your opponent more questions.'” 

The result seems obvious.  It is human nature, at least among lawyers, to want to interrupt and ask questions of someone you disagree with, especially if the person’s answers are not satisfactory.  In other words, the side that has a sound, convincing answer for every question has created a better argument.

Now, if only a study could show how to have a sound, convincing answer for every question in every argument.  That would be a real secret to successful advocacy.

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Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association Presents Awards to Michael O’Hear and Tom Shriner

 Warm congratulations to our colleague, Professor Michael M. O’Hear, who recently received the Judge Robert W. Warren Public Service Award, at a ceremony during the Eastern District of Wisconsin Bar Association’s annual meeting. It was a pleasure for a number of us to attend and see Michael receive well-deserved recognition for his service. As Nathan Fishbach, of Whyte Hirschboeck Dudek, noted in making the presentation, Michael is “a distinguished academician whose mission is to analyze and explain the dynamics of the sentencing process.” Indeed, Michael has become a national leader in the study and discussions concerning sentencing, and he has been active in this community as well. 

At the same ceremony, the Eastern District presented its Judge Myron L. Gordon Lifetime Achievement Award to Foley & Lardner’s Thomas L. Shriner, Jr., an Indiana University law graduate and well-known Milwaukee litigator (and adjunct professor of law here at Marquette). The citation accompanying the award, written by Bill Mulligan, L’60, and Dean Joseph D. Kearney, concluded with the observation that Tom is “respected and admired for his prodigious knowledge of the law, great wit, smile, and willingness to help others.”  Congratulations as well to Tom.

The full citations can be found here concerning Michael and here concerning Tom.

 

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