Rofes Receives Kutulakis Award

AALS Peter RofesIt was a privilege today to attend the lunch of the Section on Student Services at the Association of American Law Schools’ annual meeting. For our colleague, Professor Peter K. Rofes, received the section’s Peter N. Kutulakis Award. This award recognizes the outstanding contributions of an institution, administrator, or law professor in the provision of services to law students. Our Associate Dean for Administration, Bonnie M. Thomson, nominated Professor Rofes for the Kutulakis Award, and Professor Rofes richly deserves it.

Permit me to repeat what I said a year ago concerning Prof. Rofes. The context was my reporting to students, in my beginning-of-semester letter, that Prof. Rofes had elected to return this academic year to full-time faculty duties, in the tradition of the Law School, after lengthy service as director of the part-time program and associate dean for academic affairs. I wished to explain “my thanks and admiration”:

I have been especially impressed by Prof. Rofes’s ability—even while administering the academic program, including determining course offerings, working with full-time and adjunct faculty, overseeing the schedule, and running the Academic Support Program—never to lose sight of the individuals with whom he works and never to fail to make time, for example, for the individual in need of time, attention, or assistance. There is a lesson for you in his work. For your work as a lawyer also will be in support and service of others; indeed, the work of the lawyer inheres most basically in the attention to and care for another. I express at graduation my hope that you have found some models in these, your early days in the profession. You—we—would do well especially to consider the important ways in which Prof. Rofes is an exemplar.

Congratulations, Peter—and thank you.

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Appointment of Russ Feingold

The University has announced today that Russell D. Feingold will join us as Visiting Professor of Law. In addition to noting this announcement, I wish to elaborate briefly upon my decision to appoint Sen. Feingold.

Let me begin with his background. Sen. Feingold is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, a former Rhodes Scholar, and an honors law graduate of both Oxford University and Harvard University. He practiced law for six years with two leading Wisconsin law firms, Foley & Lardner and LaFollette & Sinykin. Sen. Feingold served for ten years in the Wisconsin Senate and eighteen years in the United States Senate, with the latter service concluding earlier this week, after his loss in the November election. He is known for his studious approach to the complex issues before the United States Senate, and particularly before the Senate’s select committee on intelligence and committees on the budget, foreign relations, and the judiciary. Sen. Feingold’s expertise and experience in a range of important legal fields will provide the basis for an upper-level elective course, Current Legal Issues: The U.S. Senate, which he will teach in the spring semester at the Law School. In addition to his teaching, Sen. Feingold will be working on a book concerning issues of the day.

On topics ranging from financing of political campaigns to civil liberties in an age of international terrorism to America’s engagement in Afghanistan, Sen. Feingold has been forthright, thoughtful, and independent. While I do not doubt that some of his views are controversial, or, still less, suggest that all of them are right, an institution of legal education is especially well suited to explore multiple dimensions of such issues. Thus, I believe that Sen. Feingold is almost uniquely well-positioned to contribute to discussion of numerous legal issues at Marquette Law School, through both teaching and writing. This is especially so because, throughout my discussions with Sen. Feingold, I was impressed with the commitment and seriousness with which he approached the role of professor. I am grateful that he will be with us for a time. I hope that you will join me in welcoming Professor Feingold.

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Lubar Fund for Public Policy Announced

Marquette University Law School The University has announced today that Sheldon B. Lubar has made a $2 million gift to the Law School. Mr. Lubar is a much-admired business and civic leader: he is the founder and chairman of Lubar & Co., has been a presidential appointee with Senate confirmation, and has engaged deeply in seeking to improve this region. The gift, one of the largest in the history of the Law School, will create the Lubar Fund for Public Policy. The Lubar Fund will support public policy research and initiatives, including conferences and symposia; faculty research; curriculum development; and programs that enhance the teaching of public policy issues at Marquette Law School. The gift represents extraordinary confidence by a renowned business and civic leader in our public policy work at the Law School. Although that work began to be distinctly recognized with the appointment of Mike Gousha several years ago, it has been my sense—more than an intuition but still evolving into a full plan—that we are only scratching the surface here. I look forward to our effort to mine this field, for the betterment of the community, and am grateful to Shel Lubar for his support and confidence.

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