Public – Page 291 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Marc Marotta

Post author:Matthew J. Parlow
Post published:April 9, 2015
Post category:Marquette Law School Public

The Marquette family — indeed, the Milwaukee community and the state more generally — lost one of its great leaders yesterday when Marc Marotta suddenly passed away. His death was jarring; he was only 52. Many people knew Marc far better than I, but I had the great fortune of getting to know him through our work together on the Board of Directors of the Bradley Center Sports and Entertainment Corporation for the past few years. In fact, I saw him on Tuesday morning at a board meeting, where he was his usual self: energetic, gregarious, and engaging … which made yesterday’s news even more incomprehensible.

My interest in this post is not to detail Marc’s many accomplishments; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel does a great job of it here (though no one article can truly do justice to the work and legacy of Marc Marotta). Instead, as our third-year students inch closer to graduation and becoming Marquette lawyers, I hope to highlight aspects of Marc’s life and career that are worth reflection by our students — indeed, by all of us in the profession — as they become lawyers and serve the public.

Marc was an excellent lawyer — just ask anyone with whom he worked.

Israel Reflections 2015–Day Four: Dinner with Lawyers

Post author:Andrea K. Schneider
Post published:April 9, 2015
Post category:Marquette Law School Negotiation Public

For dinner on our fourth night, we joined lawyers from the region around the Sea of Galilee for a meal and mingling. Much thanks for the yummy food and company to the partnership between this region in Israel and Milwaukee that sets this up every year. Many students built professional relationships during this meal, gleaned advice from practitioners and professors, and engaged in meaningful dialogue.

Student Lucas Bennewitz had a particularly thoughtful discussion:

During our trip, we had dinner at a kibbutz in Tiberius with different Israeli attorneys practicing in different areas. Both our stomach and our brains were stuffed to the brim that evening with both excellent food and lively discussions about Israeli law and politics. While enjoying more hummus and rice than we could handle, we gained valuable insight on the nature of the Israeli legal system, heard some criticism from the Israeli lawyers about their current system, and compared the Israeli and the American legal systems. We also discussed the role that legal internships play in the Israeli law school experience.

A Rebellion of Giants: Dixon, Ryan, and Taming the Railroads in the Gilded Age

Post author:Joseph A. Ranney
Post published:April 9, 2015
Post category:Legal History Public Wisconsin Law & Legal System Wisconsin Supreme Court

Chief Justice Luther S. Dixon — Chief Justice
Luther S. Dixon

This is the fifth in a series of Schoone Fellowship Field Notes.

Eastern jurists such as John Marshall, James Kent, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Benjamin Cardozo have received the lion’s share of attention from law professors and historians over the years. Two fellow giants from the Midwest, Michigan’s Thomas Cooley and Iowa’s John Dillon, have been relegated to comparative obscurity.

Cooley and Dillon played a central role in shaping the contours of modern American constitutional law. They forged their philosophies in the heat of two critical judicial debates over the role of railroads in American society. Two Wisconsin justices, Luther Dixon and Edward Ryan, were also leaders in those debates, and their contributions to American constitutional law deserve to be better known.