Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

SBA Statement in Support of BLM and Against Racial Injustice

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:June 23, 2020
Post category:Civil Rights Criminal Law & Process First Amendment Human Rights Legal Profession Marquette Law School Milwaukee Public Race & Law Student Contributor

Logo of Student Bar Association To Our Peers, Professors, And Administrators:

Marquette University Law School Student Bar Association writes to you today to address the tragedy that we as a community and a country have faced in the last three weeks. Not one of a pandemic, but rather the state-sanctioned murders of Black Americans. Namely, Ahmaud Arbery, Nina Pop, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others. Their deaths are not novel, and we would be remiss to categorize them as such. Their deaths are the tragic manifestation of a long-standing system of racial oppression that continues to unjustly claim the lives of Black Americans.

We want to be loud and exceptionally clear: SBA believes Black Lives Matter. We are an anti-racist organization, and we condemn every form of racism. We stand in solidarity with the members of the Black Law Student Association, the Black community of Marquette University, and the Black community around the world.

What Does Addiction Look Like?

Post author:Judith G. McMullen
Post published:June 21, 2020
Post category:Family Law Health Care Legal Practice Public

Picture of Pills When lawyers think about working with clients who have addictions, we often imagine clients who are young or middle-aged and facing legal consequences such as criminal charges for drug possession or for driving under the influence of alcohol or another drug. But not every person struggling with addictions is young, in trouble with law enforcement, or even using substances in a visible way that signals addiction to family members or professionals.

More than 2.5 million adults over age 55 struggle with addictions every year in the United States.

As We Approach our Autonomous Future, Will Products Liability Law Hold Us Back or Shove Us Forward?

Post author:Alex Lemann
Post published:June 17, 2020
Post category:Public Tort Law

Arizona Appellate Court Revives Plaintiff’s Claim that Vehicle that Struck Her was Defective By Virtue of Not Including Autonomous Safety Feature

In recent years, highly autonomous vehicles have acquired a reputation as a technology that is perpetually just a few years away. Meanwhile, their enormous promise continues to tantalize. AVs have the potential to transform American life in a variety of ways, reducing costs both large and small. From virtually eliminating the roughly 40,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries we suffer in car accidents every year to making it possible to commute to work while sleeping, AVs are seen as enormously promising.

Against this backdrop, many torts scholars have expressed concern that imposing liability on AV manufacturers threatens to slow or even deter AV development. When AVs take the wheel, will the companies that make them also take on liability for whatever crashes they can’t avoid? AV development also raises the possibility—much less commonly noticed—of new liability for manufacturers of conventional vehicles. If AVs are significantly safer, will courts and juries come to see conventional vehicles as defective? According to a recent Arizona appellate court opinion, the answer is… maybe so.