Introducing our August Bloggers

We welcome our alumni and student bloggers for August.

head shot of Rebeca Lopez
Rebeca Lopez

Our alumni contributor is Rebeca López (L’12). Rebeca is an attorney on Godfrey & Kahn, S.C.’s Labor, Employment & Immigration Law Practice Group, where she counsels and assists clients in navigating complex legal issues arising in the employment relationship, including addressing disability and leave accommodation requests, wage and hour complaints, and employment discrimination allegations. Rebeca represents employers in matters before federal and state courts and equal rights agencies, and conducts internal investigations into employee complaints and allegations.

Rebeca also serves on various boards of directors in the legal and non-profit community; she was appointed by Mayor Tom Barrett to the Wisconsin Center District Board of Directors from 2016 to 2018 and was appointed by Governor Tony Evers to the Governor’s Judicial Selection Advisory Committee in 2019. In 2015, Rebeca was named to Milwaukee Business Journal’s “40 under 40,” and in 2016, she was recognized as one of Wisconsin’s 48 most powerful Latinos by Madison 365.

Rebeca López worked as an immigration caseworker and a regional coordinator for seven years before attending Marquette Law School and graduating magna cum laude in 2012. While in law school, Rebeca served as Business Editor of the Marquette Law Review and interned at the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin for Judge Lynn S. Adelman. Her student-written law review article was quoted by CNN in April.

head shot of Randal Finger
Randal Finger

Our student contributor is 2L Randal Finger. Randal was born and raised in Germantown, Wisconsin, and lives there now. He attended Ripon College and where he received a Politics & Government degree. While at Ripon College, Randal had a practicing attorney as an adjunct professor, which, he said, solidified his decision to attend law school. Over the summer, he worked downtown at Northwestern Mutual as a summer clerk, working on a variety of projects throughout the company. He noted that he has grown fond of real estate law throughout his short time in law school and his time at Northwestern and is the treasurer of the Real Estate Law Society at Marquette. As of now, Randal said he hopes to practice “somewhere in the real estate realm,” but is open to other areas. “I understand that my limited exposure to law in the real world could mean that there is something out there that I enjoy much more.”

Welcome to Rebeca and to Randal. We look forward to your contributions.

 

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Congratulations to the 2019 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Finalists

Picture of courtroom with judges on the bench and student advocates seated at tablesCongratulations to the winners of the 2019 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition, Brooke Erickson and Micaela Haggenjos. Congratulations also go to finalists Luis Gutierrez and Nicholas Wanic. Erickson and Haggenjos additionally won the Franz C. Eschweiler Prize for Best Brief, and Erickson won the Ramon A. Klitzke Prize for Best Oralist.

The competitors argued before a packed house in the Lubar Center. Presiding over the final round were Hon. Charles R. Wilson (11th Circuit Court of Appeals), Hon. Daniel Kelly (Wisconsin Supreme Court), and Hon. Lisa K. Stark (Wisconsin Court of Appeals).

Many thanks to the judges and competitors for their hard work, enthusiasm, and sportsmanship in all the rounds of competition. Thank you, too, to the Law School administration and staff for their work in putting on the event. Special thanks to Dean Kearney for his support of the competition.

Thank you as well to the Moot Court Association for its work in putting this event together, and especially to 3L Sadie Olson, who so adeptly handled the details of the competition.

Students are selected to participate in the competition based on their success in the fall Appellate Writing and Advocacy class at the Law School.

Here is a link to the video of the final round.

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The Marquette Law Review is Quoted by CNN News

Marquette Law Review CoverA quote from and a link to a student-written comment in the Marquette Law Review made it into a CNN story this week.

CNN reported that on Friday President Trump criticized the Flores Settlement. According to CNN, he said, “We’ve had some very bad court decisions. The Flores decision is a disaster, I have to tell you. Judge Flores, whoever you may be, that decision is a disaster for our country. A disaster.”

The Flores Settlement, a settlement agreement from Reno v. Flores that limits the amount of time that immigrant children can be detained and governs the conditions under which those children can be detained, is actually named after the plaintiff in that case, Jenny Lisette Flores. Flores had fled El Salvador as a teenager.

CNN then briefly explained the Flores case, quoting from the comment, Codifying the Flores Settlement Agreement: Seeking to Protect Immigrant Children in U.S. Custody:

[Flores] fled her country in 1985 and tried to enter the United States to be with her aunt. The former government agency Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested her at the border, and she was placed in a juvenile detention center, where she was handcuffed and strip-searched, according to the Marquette Law Review. The INS refused to grant her aunt custody of Jenny because it wouldn’t release minors to “third-party adults,” the law review article said.

The link brought readers to the 2012 comment authored by Rebeca M. López (L’12), who was then a student at Marquette University Law School. Lopez is now an associate attorney at Godfrey & Kahn, S.C., in Milwaukee.

*Hat tip to Tyler Wickman (L’08) for noticing the CNN story. Tyler will be our May Alumni Blogger of the Month.

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