Marquette Honors Noted Legal Historian Paul Prucha, S.J.

On Thursday, May 19, Marquette University honored Prof. Emeritus Francis Paul Prucha, S.J. with a special reception in at the Raynor Library Archives.  The event was timed to mark Prof. Prucha’s ninetieth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment to the Marquette faculty, as well as the sixtieth anniversary of his entrance into the Jesuit Order.

Prucha is the preeminent scholar of the modern era on the subject of United States government-Native American relations.  His numerous works include The Indian in American History (1971); Americanizing the American Indians (1973); The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands (1973); The Churches and the Indian Schools, 1888-1912 (1979); The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (1985), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History; and American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (1994).

Father Prucha was born in River Falls, Wisconsin in 1921.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from River Falls State Teachers College (now UW-River Falls) in 1941, and after stints as a high school teacher and an Army Air corpsman, he enrolled in the graduate program in history at the University of Minnesota, from which he received an M.A. degree in 1947.  He then transferred to Harvard University from which he received his PhD in 1950.

After receiving his PhD, Prucha entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained as a priest in 1957.  He joined the Marquette History Department in 1960. Because of the work of Prucha and colleagues like Frank Klement and Athan Theoharis, Marquette became a center of American legal-historical studies in the central United States in the second half of the twentieth century.  Prof. Prucha took emeritus status in 1988, but has continued to live and work at Marquette.

Although never a member of the law school faculty Father Prucha was a regular visitor to the law school library and a mentor to a number of law school faculty, including Professors Idleman and Hylton.  He is also the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees.

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Law Students of Hope

This past Friday, Marquette Law School held a celebration of hope – hope for our community, hope for the legal profession, and hope for our institution.  The 2011 Posner Pro Bono Exchange between Fr.  Fred Kammer, S.J., director of the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University in New Orleans and Mike Gousha, Distinguished Fellow of Law and Public Policy at Marquette Law School, followed immediately by the induction of 91 new law student members of the Pro Bono Society (bringing the total to 103 for the academic year), was bounded by hope.

How could we alumni, staff, faculty, and donors in attendance not find hope and admiration for so many law students who committed themselves to placing their legal education at the service of those in need, without credit or compensation, even in the midst of a difficult economy and increasing academic competition?  There is no requirement to perform such voluntary service, yet, each year, an increasing number of our law students choose to perform more than fifty hours of supervised, law-related, volunteer service in our community.  Whether at the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinic, the Legal and Medical Partnership for Families, the Marquette Foreclosure Mediation Program, the Marquette Legal Initiative for Nonprofit Corporations, or any of a dozen other programs or placements, these students render a real service to those in need – and in so doing, begin a career commitment to the principal of pro bono publico – service for the good of the public.

Fr. Kammer reminded us that service to others, particularly service to the most vulnerable among us, is at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching and thus, a central theme of Jesuit education. 

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Drugs and Long-Term Care

Video is now available here from the Elder’s Advisor‘s fine conference last month on drugs and long-term care.  Here is the description of the conference:

For this symposium, we bring together a variety of practitioners and academics to speak on current topics about the use of pharmaceuticals for residents of long-term care facilities. Our speakers will address the impact of regulatory requirements on the timely delivery of medications to residents in long-term care facilities. They will discuss the impact of consumer choice and cost on the drug markets. They will also consider the implications of the medicalization of aging as a disease rather than treating aging as a natural process. Finally, we will close with a discussion of the legal, ethical, and medical concerns surrounding the ability of long-term care residents and their decision-makers to refuse medications and treatment.

I learned a great deal from the portions of the conference I attended — much of it rather disquieting — and I would recommend the video to anyone with a professional or personal interest in the way that drugs are administered in long-term care facilities.

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