In Remembrance of One Public Defender—and in Praise of All Such

Howard EisenbergHoward B. Eisenberg’s yahrzeit, as some might say, is late this week: June 4 will mark 20 years since his death. We remember him at Marquette University Law School as our dean, a position in which he served with great effect and distinction but for too brief a time (1995 until his death in 2002). On occasional past anniversaries of his death, various of us have recalled one aspect or another of his deanship (a post last year contains various links).

Yet it is another part of Howard’s remarkable professional life to which I find myself often returning these days. For almost six years—from December 1972 to September 1978—Howard served as the State Public Defender, by appointment of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Without doubt, this was his great formative work after law school, and much that he did subsequently can be traced to those six years (we reprinted Howard’s full resume in the special memorial issue of the Marquette Law Review published upon his death, beginning at p. 208 in the journal’s numbering).

Without doubting the difficulties of a deanship (in Howard’s case, first with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and then at Marquette), Howard’s work as the State Public Defender was an extraordinary challenge. He was thrust into it barely a year out of law school and only months after finishing a clerkship with Justice Horace Wilkie of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (What remarkable work Howard must have done as a law clerk to engender that sort of confidence from the court.) Howard met the challenge, at least insofar as anyone could have, as attested in the 2002 memorial issue by three of his former colleagues in the public defender’s office. Their essays capture an impressive amount of his work and even personality, as I am reminded by his occasional wry self-introduction in those years (recalled on p. 248): “I’m Howard Eisenberg, State Public Defender, which the Supreme Court thinks is Latin for ‘Judgment Affirmed.’”

I have never been a public defender, of course, although a long-running pro bono case that over the past decade Anne Berleman Kearney and I have handled, as appointed by the public defender’s office, has given me a small bit of relatively firsthand insight into the joys and (mostly) sorrows experienced by public defenders, at least in appellate matters (Howard’s métier). So I am reminded of him in that professional sphere as well.

In all events, this year, even as I recall Howard Eisenberg, I hope, looking forward, that we, as a legal profession and certainly as a law school, can celebrate the work of these extraordinary men and women: our public defenders. We are fortunate in Wisconsin to have the leadership of Kelli Thompson, L’96, as the State Public Defender, and her colleagues include Tom Reed, longtime adjunct professor here. To preview an upcoming issue of the Marquette Lawyer magazine (the one coming out not in a couple of days but in late 2022), I imagine that we will have more to say there. For what it is worth here, I wish to say that the work of all of these individuals has my great admiration.

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Celebrating the Class of 2022—Old Traditions and New Elements

Hon. Elizabeth B. Prelogar
       Hon. Elizabeth B. Prelogar

It was my privilege to be in the splendid courtroom of the Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday (Monday, May 23) to move the admission of Marquette law graduates to the bar. They graduated this past weekend, so such admission was their privilege, by virtue of receiving our diploma, meeting the court’s curricular requirements, and satisfying its character and fitness standards. In looking for a prior such motion that I had made, I came upon the one from 2015, where I noted that it was the twelfth consecutive May that I had appeared before the court for this purpose. I seemed to expect to do this annually until I should no longer be dean. In fact, the “streak” soon ended, in 2016, when an injury prevented my appearance before the Court—and then of course, a few years later, there would be the pandemic. Even then, the Court, on paper in 2020 and in the Wisconsin Assembly chamber in 2021, went to great lengths to ensure the prompt admission of our graduates via the diploma privilege.

The 2022 end-of-year proceedings seemed more like old times, though with some new elements. We convened for our Hooding Ceremony this past Saturday evening in the elegant, historic Milwaukee Theatre, as for many years. Yet this year, it was also our Commencement Ceremony, as Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell had delegated to me the authority, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, to confer the J.D. degree on each of our graduating students. Hannah Chin, a graduate selected by her classmates, addressed the ca. 1,300 people in attendance, reminding us of all that our 2022 graduates have earned and gained throughout the past three difficult years. The commencement address was delivered by the federal government’s top lawyer before the U.S. Supreme Court: the Hon. Elizabeth B. Prelogar, solicitor general of the United States. Solicitor General Prelogar, in her first trip ever to Wisconsin, gave a substantial amount of wise counsel. Yet my own wisdom, in inviting her, you will permit me to say, seemed entirely confirmed by her unexpected but most welcome rousing endorsement of the “Oxford comma”—and her exhorting, if not quite enjoining, the graduates always to use it. Of course, Solicitor General Prelogar highlighted not just punctuation but also such (other) foundational topics as the need to put oneself in uncomfortable circumstances in order to grow professionally, the importance of being kind to those above and below oneself in any group, and the value of always carrying a notepad (see what I did there, including that last comma?). There was much to be learned from the evening’s guest addresses.

The completion of the program entitling one to a Marquette law degree is a substantial accomplishment, I always tell our graduates. This is so “in any era,” I said in my remarks this year. It did not seem necessary for me to engage in any larger discussion of the pandemic. Yet, truly, I extend particular kudos to the newest group of Marquette lawyers, and I express much gratitude to all involved in their education, graduation, and admission to the bar.

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Congratulations to the Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Finalists

Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition, Matt Kass and JP Curran. Congratulations also go to finalists Fefe Jaber and Nicole Jennings. Travis Goeden and Ruth Nord-Pekar won the Franz C. Eschweiler Prize for Best Brief. Matt Kass won the Ramon A. Klitzke Prize for Best Oralist.

The competitors argued before a large audience in the Lubar Center. Presiding over the final round were Hon. Michael Brennan, Hon. Thomas Hruz, and Hon. Mary Triggiano.

Continue ReadingCongratulations to the Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition Finalists