My Effort at a Half-Court Shot, or the Importance of a Faculty Blog

Years ago, before I arrived at the Law School in 1997, the annual student-faculty basketball game concluded on a dramatic note. My colleague, Professor Michael McChrystal, was fouled as time expired, with the faculty trailing by 2 points. There being essentially no time left on the clock, the court was cleared as Prof. McChrystal went to the foul line. He calmly sank both foul shots, sending the game into overtime, where the faculty proceeded to win. Prof. McChrystal has had the good sense never to play in the game again. (I once asked his daughter whether she had ever heard the story, and she allowed that it had come up on more than one occasion.)

This past Thursday evening saw this year’s game between the students and the faculty (the latter term being used loosely, as, happily, there are several other personnel who play on the faculty side). I declined the invitation to play, as I have in each instance since arriving in 1997, on a rather straightforward cost-benefit calculus. But I attended, of course, and even suggested to Tonya Turchik and Andy Shiffman, our Student Bar Association leaders, that I would do a half-court shot at half-time.

When half-time came, I took off my suit coat, put on my Opus hard hat (for no real reason, and certainly not, as one colleague suggested, because I feared that the ball would come back down on my head), and went to half-court. Professor Peter Rofes, in handing me the ball, asked which way I wanted to shoot; I suggested the direction in which all the fans (gathered at one end) could best see the whole thing. I would later learn that he and another colleague had a bet on the precise way in which I would miss the shot.

With little fanfare, I took the ball, bounced it several times, and shot it into the air from half-court. What would be the result?

Continue ReadingMy Effort at a Half-Court Shot, or the Importance of a Faculty Blog

O’Hear to Chair the Federal Nominating Commission

Since 1979, Wisconsin’s senators have used some form of what they term a “Federal Nominating Commission” to recommend individuals for vacant federal judgeships and U.S. Attorney’s positions. (One can see the current charter from the senators here.) Whether this approach is good public policy is a worthy question, but not my topic here.

Rather, I wish to make an observation concerning leadership of the Federal Nominating Commission: Where there is a vacancy, the charter calls for the dean of the law school in the federal judicial district (Marquette in the Eastern District and the UW-Madison in the Western District) or his designee to chair the commission. I have thus chaired the commission on occasions in the past.

With respect to the current vacancy in the U.S. Attorney’s position in the Eastern District, occasioned by the departure of Steve Biskupic, L’87, for private practice, I this week exercised my option to delegate my responsibilities. This occurs from time to time (e.g., the late Dean Howard B. Eisenberg tapped our colleague, Professor Peter K. Rofes, on one occasion in the 1990s, and a similar thing has occurred on occasion in the Western District).

Specifically, I have turned to my colleague, Michael M. O’Hear, Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Research, and (least relevantly) managing editor of this blog. My principal reason, besides other demands on my attention, is my belief that Professor O’Hear — a leading legal academic in the area of criminal sentencing — is unusually well qualified to help guide this search.

I hope that Professor O’Hear will consider using this blog as one of the means of disseminating information about the Federal Nominating Commission’s important undertakings. In all events, the commission’s recommendation of four to six individuals to serve as the U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee is due to the senators under the charter near the end of March.

Continue ReadingO’Hear to Chair the Federal Nominating Commission

Chief Flynn Discusses “Issues”

Mike Gousha and Police Chief Ed FlynnMike Gousha began his spring-semester series of conversations “On the Issues” by hosting Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn, who had come to the Law School last January within weeks of starting as chief and thus has a year under his belt (in addition to his substantial experience elsewhere). Anyone who has never heard Flynn speak is missing a treat: he is smart, extraordinarily well-spoken, and witty. A podcast of the interview, which includes as usual with Gousha questions from the audience, is available here and is well worth a listen.

Perhaps the most striking part, for me, was Flynn’s description (at about the 30-minute mark) of how bad police drag good police down:

And I’m not minimizing or mitigating when I say, “Show me a hospital-ful of doctors, and I’ll show the white-coat wall of silence. Show me a roomful of attorneys, and I will show you the pinstripe wall of silence. Show me a roomful of police officers, and if we’re not thoughtful about it, we will have the blue wall of silence.”

Because the devil’s bargain becomes this—and trust me, this is the truth—the overwhelming majority of your police officers come into the job with notions of moral clarity, and they want to protect the good guys from the bad guys. They function in a world that is far more ambiguous than they thought. And they have to make the kinds of decisions which the order book doesn’t cover and the general orders don’t cover, but they live in a rule-based environment. They know they’re expected to do something, and they do things—and most of the time they’re within a margin of error of right. Sometimes they’re wrong—their colleagues know it. Sadly, over the course of the years, if you’re not careful, if you don’t have adult discussions about it, the devil’s bargain is this: The good cop who screws up makes the devil’s bargain with the cop who’s a thief or a brute, where neither one of them says anything. And that’s where you don’t want to get.

Flynn then proceeds to describe how in his estimation anyone who wishes to change this police subculture has to look upon the general police culture with a basic degree of empathy. Other aspects of the interview included Gousha’s asking Flynn to compare Milwaukee’s drop in violent crime over the past year with Chicago’s rise in the same.

To the list of adjectives that I earlier used in describing Flynn, I should add another. He seems loyal as well: he never misses the opportunity, even while appearing at this Jesuit institution, to credit the Christian Brothers, whose institutions he attended for both high school and college.

Continue ReadingChief Flynn Discusses “Issues”
Newer Posts
Older Posts