Water and People Conference

2880829064_eae0f10628On Friday, February 26, 2010, Marquette University Law School (MULS) will hold its annual Public Service Conference at the Alumni Memorial Union on the Marquette University campus on the increasingly important topic of water law.  The conference, entitled “Water and People,” will address water issues in Wisconsin (as well as nationally and internationally), development and the environment, regulation, and water ethics.  Statewide leaders from business, government, and non-profit served on a steering committee that worked with Assistant Dean for Public Service, Dan Idzikowski, and myself (I coordinate the MULS water law program) to plan the conference.  Based on the group’s efforts, experts from Wisconsin, around the United States, and from Canada will gather to talk about some of the most important topics in the field of water law.  The conference will also feature a keynote address by Cameron Davis, senior advisor to the United States EPA Administrator for Great Lakes Restoration.  You can learn more about the conference and register for the conference at http://law.marquette.edu/cgi-bin/site.pl?2130&pageID=4303.

While no blog post can truly capture all that this conference will entail, here is a preview of the panels and topics.

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The Legacy of the Little Rock Crucible

little rock 9“That crucible moment” – that’s a phrase Ernest Green used to describe the period when he and eight other African American students enrolled in and attended Little Rock Center High School in 1957. It took the president of the United States and 10,000 soldiers to help them get in the door in deeply segregationist Arkansas. But more than anything, their success took the determination and self-control that the nine showed against almost overwhelming opposition and hate. The events of that fall became a huge landmark in the fight to end official segregation. 

I didn’t expect to be as moved as I was when six of the nine took the stage at the Varsity Theater this week to receive Marquette’s highest honor, the Pere Marquette Discovery Award, from Father Robert Wild, S.J., the university’s president. 

Maybe it was because I was just barely old enough at the time – I was seven – to have the television images from Little Rock permanently planted in my mind. And here they were, in person. 

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Mother and Daughter, Justly Proud

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Ellen Brostrom are wary of almost all of the labels that people try to put on them and on other justices and judges.

But one label they are proud of is mother and daughter, and that was clear Thursday during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at the Law School. The two are believed to be the only mother and daughter to serve on the bench at the same time in Wisconsin history, Gousha said.

“You’ve just been an incredible role model for me,” Judge Brostrom told her mother. Justice Roggensack said she never intentionally put her daughter on the path to being a judge, but she agreed she was very pleased when Bostrom narrowly won election in 2009.

When Gousha asked how the two of them react to labels such as “conservative” or “liberal” when it comes to describing judges, Justice Roggensack said, “I think it’s a lazy definition.” The use of labels reflects the high degree of partisanship of the times, especially when it comes to elections. She said labels are useful in negative campaigning, which is the way campaigns “can hit hardest fastest.”

Most cases that come before the state Supreme Court don’t fit on a liberal-conservative axis, she said.

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