Speakers at Marquette – Page 20 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Flint Water: Author Describes a Clear Crisis and Unclear Answers on Accountability

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:January 23, 2019
Post category:Public Speakers at Marquette Water Law

Anna Clark admits there are thing she wishes she could have probed in greater depth for her critically-praised 2018 book, The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy. At the top of that list is the broad question of accountability for the actions that led to a nightmare crisis of lead contamination in water in the city near Detroit.

At the conclusion of an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program Wednesday at Marquette Law School, Clark said, “There are lot of unanswered questions.” Investigations of Flint’s water problem are continuing, she said, and she had to stop work on the book at some point.

“If I had more time and more space, I would love to devote it to following a little more what this accountability question looks like,” Clark said. She said that her concern apples not only to Flint but also more broadly to questions of who and what to hold accountable when major environmental harm is uncovered anywhere.

New Marquette Lawyer Magazine Examines War Powers, State Supreme Court Elections, Legal Scholarship Ethics, and More

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:October 29, 2018
Post category:Legal Scholarship Marquette Law School President & Executive Branch Public Speakers at Marquette Wisconsin Supreme Court

The bald eagle symbolizes the strength of the United States, not least when the country uses its military power. The eagle on the cover of the Marquette Lawyer magazine, Fall 2018 issue, shows the determination, even the fierceness, of the eagle during times of war.

But the process involved in deciding where and how that eagle flies is more complex than many people may realize. In the cover story in the new Marquette Law School magazine, David J. Barron, judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and formerly a Harvard Law School professor, insightfully examines three chapters in American history when a president and leaders of Congress had differing positions on use of power. Barron focuses on three of the nation’s most revered presidents: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The article is an edited and expanded version of the E. Harold Hallows Lecture that Barron delivered at the Law School in April 2018. To read the article, click here.

Interspersed throughout the article are reactions by three individuals with different perspectives on the relationship between Congress and the commander-in-chief: Russ Feingold, former three-term U.S. senator from Wisconsin and currently distinguished visiting lecturer in international studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; Julia R. Azari, associate professor of political science at Marquette University and a scholar of the American presidency; and Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare and senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution.

Barron’s article, together with the reactions, is only one of the thoughtful and thought-provoking pieces in the new Marquette Lawyer. Elsewhere in the magazine:

How the Basic Journalism of PolitiFact Has Changed the Political Landscape

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:October 23, 2018
Post category:Media & Journalism Political Processes & Rhetoric Public Speakers at Marquette

In 2007, with President George W. Bush’s second term as president coming to an end and Vice President Richard Cheney not aiming to succeed him, open races for both Democratic and Republican nominations for president were developing. Bill Adair thought it was time to bring more fact-checking into American political journalism. Adair, then a Washington-based journalist with the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) began a project that the newspaper called Politifact.

The idea took off and, more than a decade later, PolitiFact and other political fact-checking efforts have become an important part of the national journalism landscape. PolitiFact is now an independent non-profit organization. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel became a partner with PolitiFact in 2010, ahead of the election that year in which Republican Scott Walker defeated Democrat Tom Barrett for governor, and continues to run PolitiFact pieces, with either national or local focuses, almost every day.

In an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program Tuesday at Marquette Law School, Angie Drobnic Holan, now the editor of PolitiFact and a part of its team since the start, and Tom Kertscher, who has worked on the Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact team since its start, described the goals of what they do in terms core journalistic values.