Marquette Moot Court Association Names Participants in the 2020 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition

The Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition is the appellate moot court competition for Marquette law students and is the capstone event of the intramural moot court program. Students are invited to participate based on their top performance in the fall Appellate Writing and Advocacy course at the Law School.

Congratulations to the participants in the 2020 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition:

Adam Best
William Brookley
John Fuller
Kaitlyn Gradecki
Xavier Jenkins
Naomie Kipulu
Michelle Knapp
Nicholas Lubenow
Colleen Mandell
Jay McDivitt
Aleina McGettrick
Wynetta McIntosh
Marilyn McQuade
Tori Nanstad
Kelsey Pelegrin
Jessica Puetz
Annalisa Pusick
Mathias Rekowski
Kelley Roach
Ashley Rossman
Adam Roznowski
Lucas Schaetzel
Natalie Sobierajski
Foley Van Lieshout
Haley Wentz

The Jenkins preliminary rounds begin in March 2020, with the winning teams progressing through the quarterfinals, then semifinals, to the finals. All rounds are open to the public. Stay tuned for more information.

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Addressing the Housing Crisis on a Statewide Level

Milwaukee residents know firsthand that many cities in this country are facing an affordable housing crisis. The California legislature has recently taken major steps to address this problem. In addition to providing other protections for tenants, California’s Tenant Protection Act of 2019 has An apartment building in MIlwaukeelimited annual rent increases to 5% plus inflation for the next decade. This legislation was enacted on January 1, 2020, making California the second state to institute a statewide cap on rent increases.

Whether or not this is the best way to solve the affordable housing crisis is debatable. On the one hand such a restriction seems to oppose free-market ideals by limiting landlords’ incentives to invest in housing. Furthermore, although capping rent increases may provide many people with a relatively expedient solution to unaffordable housing, it does not address all the root-causes of the crisis and may even make the problem worse in the long run. In this regard, the cap may be likened to giving a person a fish rather than teaching the person how to fish.

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Autonomous Vehicle Malfunctions May Not Be So Complicated After All

NTSB’s Final Report on Pedestrian Fatality Involving an Uber AV Highlights Obvious Programming Missteps

On a dark street in Tempe, Arizona just before 10 p.m. on March 18, 2018, an Uber vehicle being tested in autonomous mode hit and killed a pedestrian.  This was the first pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous vehicle, and it triggered a media firestorm that caused Uber to suspend its autonomous vehicle program for nine months as it worked with the NTSB to understand the causes of the crash.  With the adoption by the NSTB of its final report on the crash on November 19, that work is now complete.

The NTSB’s final report paints a vivid picture of programming and human missteps that belies the argument commonly advanced in legal scholarship about AV liability — that crashes involving AVs will be impossible for the judges, juries, and doctrines that make up our current system of tort law to “understand.”  Indeed, the errors that led to the crash were all too simple.

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