Farewell to Professor Julian Kossow

Many of us on the Marquette Law School faculty were saddened to learn of the death earlier this month of Professor Julian Kossow. Julian had a long and varied career, primarily in academia and real estate. As he recounted in this blog post, Julian went to law school because of his frustration as a developer in dealing with lawyers. Once in law school, though, he found that he was fascinated by the law as a field of study. Legal academia was so much to his liking, in fact, that he returned to it as a professor after graduation and a clerkship on the D.C. Circuit, joining the Georgetown faculty in 1970. Later, he practiced as a real-estate lawyer and then resumed his career as a developer.

Julian could not resist the call of law-teaching indefinitely, though. In the 1990’s, he began a second career as a law professor, teaching at St. Thomas and Stetson in Florida, and then landing at Marquette in 2004. We were delighted to have him as a faculty colleague for the next decade.

Continue ReadingFarewell to Professor Julian Kossow

Violent Crime & Recidivism: Symposium Issue Now Available

The threat of violent recidivism looms large in policy debates about sentencing and corrections. Prison populations in Wisconsin and across the United States remain near historic highs. Yet, efforts to bring down those populations often run into the objection that most of the individuals in prison have been convicted of violent crimes. What if these individuals reoffend after release? The stakes seem frighteningly high when we contemplate the possibility of shorter sentences for individuals who have physically harmed others in the most damaging and disturbing ways–shootings, stabbings, sexual assaults, and so forth.

Last summer, Marquette Law School hosted a conference that brought together leading researchers to address the question of whether there might be better alternatives than long-term incapacitation  for responding to the threat of violent recidivism. Those of us in attendance enjoyed a thought-provoking series of presentations and some lively Q&A with audience members. Now, the papers from the conference have been published in a symposium issue of the Marquette Law Review.

Here are the contents:

Continue ReadingViolent Crime & Recidivism: Symposium Issue Now Available

SBA Statement in Support of BLM and Against Racial Injustice

Logo of Student Bar AssociationTo Our Peers, Professors, And Administrators:

Marquette University Law School Student Bar Association writes to you today to address the tragedy that we as a community and a country have faced in the last three weeks. Not one of a pandemic, but rather the state-sanctioned murders of Black Americans. Namely, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others. Their deaths are not novel, and we would be remiss to categorize them as such. Their deaths are the tragic manifestation of a long-standing system of racial oppression that continues to unjustly claim the lives of Black Americans.

We want to be loud and exceptionally clear: SBA believes Black Lives Matter. We are an anti-racist organization, and we condemn every form of racism. We stand in solidarity with the members of the Black Law Student Association, the Black community of Marquette University, and the Black community around the world. 

Continue ReadingSBA Statement in Support of BLM and Against Racial Injustice