The Future of Family Law?

A good family-law attorney approaches a divorce case with rigorous attention to detail, a strong understanding of finance and property issues, and a readiness to deal with quick changes in circumstances. Who could disagree with that?

Perhaps no one, and these matters were thus common ground in a provocative session for students this week, with presentations by Dean Joseph D. Kearney (“10 Things I Learned During My 28 Days as a Divorce Lawyer”), Milwaukee lawyer Thomas St. John ’72 (“5 Things Any Lawyer Should Know Even Before Taking the Case”), and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Michael J. Dwyer (“3 Things a Law Student Should Know About Family Law”). But, despite a great deal of common ground, the speakers’ views did not seem entirely in accord.

The basis for the discussion was a case that the Dean handled on a pro bono basis a few years ago in Illinois for a high school classmate. The focus of the Dean and Attorney St. John was primarily on litigation points, and there were many similarities in their lists. 

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Vincent Lyles: Taking the Positive Approach

“It can be done” – Vincent Lyles says that’s a lesson that successful economic development in Indianapolis can teach other urban centers around the country.

That phrase also sums up Lyles’ attitude about the work he does as president of M&I Community Development Corporation — and, in many ways, it summarizes Lyles’ personality.

Describing his work Wednesday at an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at the Law School, Lyles said, “Part of our expectation in life is that tomorrow is going to be better, so let’s keep working.”

The community development arm of M&I Bank has a portfolio of about $100 million in investments in low- and middle-income communities, Lyles said, and makes about $15 to $20 million a year in new investments. “That’s not a big number, but it’s not a small number, either,” he said.

It is not a charity effort. 

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Asking the Right Questions About Justifying War

If you think of “just war” theory as something associated with pacifism or as a path for justifying not using military tactics in many world situations, you’re looking at the subject from the wrong perspective, Catholic commentator George Weigel said Tuesday in a talk at Marquette Law School.

You’re looking at it the way President Barack Obama does – which is “almost entirely inside out and upside down,” Weigel said in a lecture sponsored by the student chapters of the Federalist Society and St. Thomas More Society.

Weigel, a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., is author of a widely read biography of Pope John Paul II and other books and a commentator on NBC on Catholic news.

He gave Obama credit for using Nobel Peace Prize speech recently to discuss the need to go to war against evil that exists in the world, but he said the underpinning of Obama’s justification of war was built too heavily on factors that were of lower priority than the main pillars of the subject in thought going back to St. Augustine. 

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