Marquette Law School – Page 88 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Professor Phoebe Williams Receives MBA Lifetime Achievement Award

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:November 10, 2015
Post category:Legal Profession Marquette Law School Milwaukee Public

This past summer, Professor Phoebe Williams received the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Milwaukee Bar Association (MBA). Professor Williams was honored at the MBA’s annual luncheon in June.

Professor Williams was born and raised in the segregated South, in Memphis. She has said that she remembers when she was eight years old, her father came home from his job as a schoolteacher and told her about the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. That decision, of course, struck down segregation in public schools. A young Professor Williams expected to see change immediately; she thought she would be able to go to the schools, libraries, museums, and parks that had been reserved “for whites only.” That did not happen. And it took a number of years and the hard work of many lawyers and activists before such change finally occurred.

But a young Professor Williams watched and learned. She credits her parents—both educators—with instilling in her the value of education and of service, and the value of pursuing goals with perseverance and hope. These values she carries with her to this day.

Ashley Heard Wins Legal Writing Society Writing Contest

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:November 8, 2015
Post category:Legal Writing Marquette Law School Public

At the end of October, Marquette University Law School’s Legal Writing Society sponsored a fun writing contest, looking for poetry submissions that combined law and Halloween themes. Ashley Heard’s poem does precisely that:

There once was a law school demon

summoned by a 1L heathen.

It gave students hell

until in love it fell

with the writings of Justice Stevens.

Heard, a 2L, won a $10 gift card to the Tory Hill Café. To find out more about the Marquette Legal Writing Society, contact Lauren Maddente at lauren.maddente@marquette.edu. For other fun law-related poetry, click here. Also, check out law-related book spine poetry here and here.

Back To The Future – Revisiting “Milwaukee 2015: Water, Jobs, and the Way Forward”

Post author:David Strifling
Post published:November 5, 2015
Post category:Environmental Law Marquette Law School Public Water Law

During a time-travel scene in the 1989 film “Back to the Future II,” director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale attempted to predict the world of October 2015. They got some things right and others wrong. Zemeckis and Gale aren’t the only ones who made predictions about 2015, however. Six years ago, in November 2009, Marquette Law School’s Public Policy Initiative convened a conference entitled “Milwaukee 2015: Water, Jobs, and the Way Forward.” The speakers included Wisconsin’s then-Governor Jim Doyle, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett; and Badger Meter’s Rich Meeusen, co-chair of what was then called the Milwaukee 7 Water Council (and now is simply The Water Council). The conference’s key theme was making southeast Wisconsin the hub of freshwater-related business in North America.

Meeusen delivered one of the gathering’s most memorable lines: “My dream is, by 2015, when people think water, they think Milwaukee.” Another speaker, Anselmo Teixeira of Siemens, noted that as of 2009 no water technology hub had been established in North America. Teixeira recognized Milwaukee’s advantages in seeking to become such a center, but cited the need for government, university, and business leaders to do “the right things.” Six years later, in the conference’s title year, we can begin to evaluate whether Meeusen’s dream has become a reality.