Guest Blogging is a Family Affair!

Photo of father and adult daughter standing in front of a brick wall, smiling.
Mike and Micaela Haggenjos

For the month of July, we welcome father-daughter pair Mike and Micaela Haggenjos as our alumnus and student bloggers.

Mike grew up in Prophetstown, Illiniois, attended the University of Iowa and received a B.S. degree in Political Science and Economics.  He graduated from Marquette Law in 1989.  He was in private practice until 2004 at the Port Washington, Wisconsin law firm of Ansay & Haggenjos (now O’Neill, Cannon, Hollman, DeJong & Laing, S.C.).  Mike left the practice of law to become an owner and officer of Voeller Mixers, Inc., in Port Washington, a manufacturer of equipment used to make concrete products.  Mike has been married to Ellen for 30 years and has two children, Micaela and Matthew.  Mike enjoys golf, boating and performing as the lead singer in a rock band that plays in Ozaukee and Washington County.

Micaela grew up in Port Washington, Wisconsin and received her B.A. in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During her time at MULS, Micaela interned with the Honorable Rebecca Bradley of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and is currently working for the firm Alan C. Olson & Associates in New Berlin. Micaela is a member of the Association of Women in Law and the Business Law Society at MULS and has volunteered for the MJC Family Law Forms Clinic and the Eviction Defense Project. Micaela and her competition partner, Brooke Erickson, were the champions of Marquette’s 2019 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition and won the Franz C. Eschweiler Prize for Best Brief. She looks forward to representing MULS at the National Moot Court Competition this fall and serving on the 2019-2020 Moot Court Executive Board as Associate Justice of Intramural Competitions. Micaela hopes to work in litigation and appellate practice after graduation.

We hope that this is the first of many family pairings on the Faculty Blog.

Continue ReadingGuest Blogging is a Family Affair!

The Class of 2020: The First of a New Generation

Painting depicting four men dressed in suits grabbing and fighting each other.
By Blaine A. White – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73482463

I was recently posed an interesting question which I thought would make a great topic for discussion and,while I’m unsure of how this post will be received on the faculty blog, I hope it will spur conversations as interesting as those I’ve had about the subject over the past month.

Next year I will graduate from Marquette Law School along with my fellow classmates. What is particularly noteworthy about our class is that, having first come to campus in the summer of 2017, we will be the first class to graduate who started law school under the current presidential administration. Whether you voted for Donald Trump or not, one cannot deny that his presidency has created an interesting climate not just in politics, but for the law in general. So, I was left to ponder how that interesting factoid has colored my law school experience and might affect the legal field for first year lawyers next year and in the near future.

My first intuition when pondering that question was to discuss how divisive politics and social media appear to be impacting the teaching and practice of law, but I can’t presume that my class is novel in thinking that these are tumultuous times in the legal field. I can’t personally speak to the law school climate in the past, but in my own experience being a law student can be a bit a political minefield, especially outside of Eckstein Hall.  Throughout my time in law school, all of my friends and family have been eager to ask me about or to debate about constitutional issues the president has raised that month. But that is almost to be expected, as I have been told by some of my family members who are in the field.

What I was not prepared for was how politics would influence my interactions in my various intern experiences as well.

Continue ReadingThe Class of 2020: The First of a New Generation

Out of the Shadows: Peremptory Juror Strikes At Issue in Flowers v. Mississippi

The exterior of the U.S. Supreme Court building with white stone columns and a white facade.On June 20, 2019, the United States Supreme Court reversed the conviction of Curtis Flowers.  The most recent appeal marks the sixth time that Mr. Flowers has been tried for charges arising from a quadruple homicide that occurred at the Tardy Furniture Store in Winona, Mississippi.  Mr. Flowers has been incarcerated for over 20 years, as he awaits trial.  Throughout this time, Mr. Flowers has consistently maintained his innocence. By way of background, Mr. Flowers is black.  Douglas Evans, the prosecuting attorney of all six trials, is white.

APM’s investigative podcast titled In the Dark conducted an in-depth analysis of the case.  The podcast explores the nature of the circumstantial evidence that the prosecution relied upon.  It scrutinizes the methodology of the investigating officers and explores alternative innocent interpretations of the evidence proffered.  But, for the purpose of the appeal, sufficiency of evidence is not at issue.  The narrator, Madeleine Baran, explains that “we’ve talked to hundreds of people who live in this part of Mississippi and it’s clear that the way people think about the Curtis Flowers case for the most part depends on whether they are white or black.”  And it is the issue of race, which is at the heart of the appeal recently decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Continue ReadingOut of the Shadows: Peremptory Juror Strikes At Issue in Flowers v. Mississippi