Jenkins Competitors Have Busy Weekend; Two Teams Advance to Finals

head shot of Ben Edelstein
Ben Edelstein
head shot of Kyle Frank
Kyle Frank

(Updated 3/30/21 12:25 PM to add registration link)

The last two weekends have been busy ones for the students competing in the Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition. Each team argued four times the weekend of March 20-21 in the preliminary rounds to determine which teams would advance to the quarterfinal round.

On Saturday, March 27, the eight teams that advanced argued to see which would advance to the semifinals.

head shot of Alex Lux
Alexander Lux
head shot of Natalie Mulvey
Natalie Mulvey

After some very close rounds, four teams moved on to the semifinals. Those four teams were:

Alexandra (Sasha) Chepov & Zak Wroblewski;
Ben Edelstein & Kyle Frank;
Lauren Brasington & Carsyn Bushman;
Alexander Lux & Natalie Mulvey

These four teams competed on Sunday, March 28. The two teams that emerged as finalists are:

Ben Edelstein & Kyle Frank
Alexander Lux & Natalie Mulvey

Congratulations to the finalists, and thank you to the many alumni and area attorneys who helped with the competition by grading briefs or judging oral arguments. Thanks, too, to the law school’s tech department and to Steve Nelson who kept this weekend’s virtual competition glitch-free.

The final round of the competition will be held virtually on Tuesday, April 6, at 3:30 PM, and will be lived streamed on YouTube.

The final round will be judged by The Honorable Michael Y. Scudder (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit), The Honorable Paul Thissen (Minnesota Supreme Court), and The Honorable Cynthia M. Davis (L’06) (Milwaukee County Circuit Court).

The Jenkins Completion is named in honor of the late James G. Jenkins, the first Wisconsin judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (1893-1905) and the first dean of Marquette Law School (1908-1915).

The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required to receive the link. You can register here.

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Remembering Shirley S. Abrahamson: Wisconsin’s First Woman Supreme Court Justice

Shirley Abrahamson with raised right hand, taking oath in 1976.
Shirley Abrahamson is sworn into the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1976 by late Chief Justice Bruce Beilfuss.

On Saturday, December 19, former Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson, died after battling pancreatic cancer. She was 87. Just two ways she was like another famous, short, tough, trailblazing Jewish jurist: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Abrahamson, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States in the early 1930s, grew up in New York City. She graduated magna cum laude from NYU with her bachelor’s degree in 1953. Three years later, she graduated first in her class from Indiana Law School; she was also the only woman.

She met her husband Seymour in Indiana; they moved to Madison in the early 1960s, where Abrahamson earned her S.J.D. from UW Law in 1962. Thereafter, she became the first female lawyer at the Madison law firm La Follette, Sinykin, Doyle & Anderson. She was named a partner within a year. All throughout the time she was in practice, she also taught at UW Law.

In 1976, then-Governor Patrick Lucey appointed her to the Wisconsin Supreme Court’ she was the first woman to serve there.

Continue ReadingRemembering Shirley S. Abrahamson: Wisconsin’s First Woman Supreme Court Justice

Congratulations to Marquette’s Environmental Law Moot Court Team

I intended to write this post in March, upon returning from Spring Break, but 2020 got in the way. Better late than never, as they say; and I would be remiss not to recognize the excellent work of our 2019-20 Environmental Law Moot Court team, consisting of Caleb Tomaszewski and Adam Vanderheyden. The team (pictured here along with coach Dennis Grzezinski) competed in the 2020 National Environmental Law Moot Court Photo of the 2020 environmental law moot court team with a coach.Competition hosted by Pace University in White Plains, New York. Caleb and Adam advanced out of the preliminary rounds to the quarterfinals, where they were narrowly defeated. The team received high praise from several judges, but Caleb reported that the most gratifying aspect was “hearing the judges say that we are ready to advocate in real life.” I appreciate the significant contributions of Dennis Grzezinski, Gabe Johnson-Karp, and Professor Alex Lemann, who coached the team with me. But most of all, bravo to Caleb and Adam on achieving the best placement in years for the Law School in the National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition.

Continue ReadingCongratulations to Marquette’s Environmental Law Moot Court Team