It is a longstanding tradition that the president of the United States gives a State of the Union address each year. Consider the Fall 2026 issue of Marquette Lawyer magazine a “state of the union” report issuing from Marquette Law School as Americans mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But the magazine’s approach, a bit different from that in D.C., offers nonpartisan insights into the content of the Declaration itself, the dynamic realities of the American legal system, and the lives of the people of the union.
It may seem initially curious that the most prominent part of this “state of the union” report is titled “Unstated.” In the magazine’s cover story, Thomas W. Merrill, the Charles Evans Hughes Professor of Law at Columbia University, analyzes how three “implicit ideas” have reshaped the way the federal government operates—to put it more specifically and critically, how these unstated precepts have sidelined Congress and empowered the president and the courts. Merrill, an unusually well-respected figure in the legal world, calls the changes “a fundamental deformation of the Constitution.” The article, which is a lightly edited version of the E. Harold Hallows Lecture delivered by Merrill at Marquette Law School on March 2, 2026, may be read by clicking here. A piece profiling Merrill, titled “‘A Centrist Kind of Guy,’ with Impact,” accompanies the text and may be read by clicking here.
Law School Dean Joseph D. Kearney offered insights into the content and context of the Declaration of Independence in an address to the Milwaukee Rotary Club on July 14, 2026. Kearney called the Declaration “an intensely practical document” that sets out basic principles for the new nation while providing good legal and political arguments for why independence from Great Britain was necessary. The text of his remarks, “Some Reflections on the Declaration of Independence,” may be found by clicking here.
Yesterday evening I had the privilege of accepting, on behalf of Marquette University Law School, the American Bar Association’s 2026 Pro Bono Publico Award. The award, as announced this past summer, honors the work of the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinics (MVLCs). Hon. Bryant Yang, a judge in Los Angeles, presented the award.
A delegation of some twenty-one of us—including students, alumni and other volunteers and benefactors, staff, and faculty—went to Chicago for the occasion. In light of the award’s being a recognition of widespread work in our legal community, I post here my remarks in accepting the award on behalf of all who have been involved in the MVLCs during the past twenty-five years.
Thank you, Judge Yang. This is a great honor for our community. I want to thank the American Bar Association and, in particular, the Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service for this recognition of Marquette University Law School. It enhances the honor for us to be recognized alongside Bill Boies, Jonathan Britt, Becky Kondkar, and Toni King: The work of all of you is so impressive.
As dean of Marquette Law School, I am here in a representative or official capacity. The story of the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinics can be told in perhaps just one sentence: The MVLCs consist of people who saw a need; decided to do something about it; and have remained resolved, always, to do yet more.
To elaborate briefly: Just about twenty-five years ago, Marquette law students began planning (plotting?) to work with volunteer lawyers so as to create a small legal-services operation for people who might otherwise have nowhere to turn for help. One of those attorneys (Julie Darnieder, a Marquette lawyer) is here with us tonight to celebrate. In its first year, that clinic assisted 106 clients. In 2025, the Marquette Volunteer Legal Clinics served more than 6,000 clients.
The clients are the ratio entis for the MVLCs, but on this occasion, involving a great bar association, you will permit me to focus on those involved in providing the service. This means, foremost, the hundreds of lawyers who have given their time and expertise to the MVLCs, year after year. It means, foremost, the law students who sit next to these lawyers and across from the clients, actively participating in the counseling and advising—and not there for any academic credit or to fill some requirement. It means, foremost, our community partners who have welcomed us into legal services organizations, government offices, private social-service agencies, neighborhood spaces, the courthouse—just about all manner of places where people may go for help. And if those places aren’t attractive or accessible enough, we’ll come to them in our Mobile Legal Clinic (the brainchild more than a decade ago of other Marquette lawyers also here this evening, Frank Daily and Julie Ebert). And among “those involved in providing the service” are, foremost, my colleagues at the Law School, in our Office of Public Service, led by Angela Schultz, our long-time assistant dean for public service, and including, in a variety of critical roles, Katie Mertz, Maggie Klatt, Mindy Schroeder, and, most recently, Joshua Hernandez. So this award belongs to so many people whom I am privileged to represent.
Now some might think it strange that I would describe multiple things as “foremost.” How can that be? They might be inclined to think that this reflects casuistry or sophistry—maybe even Jesuitical reasoning. In fact, I learned the rhetorical device from my predecessor as dean of Marquette Law School. Howard Eisenberg may have associated the approach with Talmudic reasoning—the proposition that multiple things could all be “foremost.”
There is a specific point in my remembrance of Dean Eisenberg. In our society, with its many people in need, there should be no religious, partisan, or ideological divisions on the importance of pro bono work. Some may come to the work substantially out of their Catholic faith; others such as Howard may tend to regard such work as a mitzvah; and still others may simply understand that this work is of the sort expected of all lawyers and reflects the best traditions of the legal profession.
When Howard died in Milwaukee in 2002, I eulogized him as Jewish, more liberal, and, rather importantly to him, a Chicago Cubs fan, whereas I, his friend and successor, am Catholic, more conservative, and, quite importantly to me, a Chicago White Sox fan. (We are all prisoners of our past.) Yet more bound us together than separated us.
Today, all of us should have as entire common ground two things: First is the value and continuing imperative of pro bono work. The second is not much, if at all, less important: With apologies (of an insincere sort) to Judge Yang, the Los Angeles Dodgers must lose, and the Milwaukee Brewers must advance to the World Series. Thank you to the ABA, and Go Brewers!
OnOne of the clearest contributors to Trump’s 2024 presidential victory was his newfound support among young voters. Estimates vary, but all agree that, when considered by age, his support grew the most with voters under 30. According to Pew, Trump’s support grew by 4 percentage points among these voters; Catalist put his improvement at 6 points. In Wisconsin, I’ve calculated that Trump’s vote share grew by 3 percentage points in the youngest fifth of the state, while it grew just a single point in every older quintile.
College campus wards offer a useful way to measure a particular slice of the youth vote—students who’ve just entered the electorate. You might expect that Trump’s improvement with young voters was limited to young people who don’t go to college, given the way educational polarization works in the rest of the electorate. But this isn’t what the data show. Trump saw some particularly large gains on certain Wisconsin college campuses.
However, across these campuses, Republican performance has cratered since Trump’s 2024 election. In April 2025, the Republican-endorsed Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel received 13.6% in the same wards that gave Trump 31.2% earlier in the same school year. This was the lowest share of any conservative candidate for President, Governor, or State Supreme Court Justice since at least 2016. Then, in 2026, the Republican endorsee Maria Lazar set a new record low in college campus vote share for a conservative candidate, with 11.6%.
Turnout fell among college voters in these elections. The campus wards made up 0.91% of the electorate in November 2024, dipping to 0.78% in April 2025 and 0.55% in April 2026. This suggests two plausible interpretations of why conservative support fell so much in those elections. One is that many college voters changed their minds and voted for a liberal court candidate after casting a ballot for Trump in 2024.
The other possibility is that Trump’s college supporters simply didn’t turn out for April elections in the same numbers as their liberal peers. Over the past 10 years, high-turnout elections have resulted in better Republican performances in campus wards, both overall and relative to the rest of the state. Republican reliance on low-propensity voters is notorious, but it’s usually attributed to their strength with less-educated citizens who vote less frequently. The patterns on Wisconsin’s college campuses suggest that, even among currently enrolled college students, those with Republican leanings are just less reliable voters than those with Democratic leanings.
The Most and Least Liberal Campuses
The campuses themselves vary a lot in their political disposition. Some match the stereotype of a leafy left-wing enclave, but others are actually proportionally home to more Republican voters than the rest of their host city.
For this analysis, I define campus wards as those where more than half the population was ages 18-22 in the 2020 census.[i] This includes wards corresponding to 12 universities and one college. Three are private and the rest are members of the UW System. Altogether these wards contain about 1.1% of the state’s total population. Because ward boundaries can change over time, I reallocated election results from old ward boundaries into the current ones based on validated voter records.
Taking the average of the past 12 elections for President, Governor, and State Supreme Court Justice, the most liberal campuses are Lawrence University, UW-Madison, and UW-Milwaukee. Trump won between 12% and 22% in these campuses’ wards in 2024. Lazar won 3%-8% in April 2026.
On average, the most conservative campuses are UW-Platteville, UW-Whitewater, and UW-Green Bay. Here, Trump won 39%-47% in 2024 and Lazar 13%-22% in April 2026.
Trump did especially well across many of these campuses, winning 50% of the vote in the wards around UW-La Crosse and more than 40% in the UW campuses at Oshkosh, River Falls, Whitewater, and Platteville.
Several campuses—even some very liberal ones—are home to noticeably more conservatives than the rest of their home municipalities. This shouldn’t be surprising. Many schools draw a wide mix of students from across the state, and those students reflect—at least to some degree—the political diversity of their homes.
A good example of this is the state’s flagship university, UW-Madison. Among conservatives, Madison is a bit of a punchline. Lee Dreyfus called it “30 square miles surrounded by reality” in his 1978 gubernatorial campaign.
In UW-Madison’s campus wards, Trump received 21% of the vote in 2016, 18% in 2020, and 22% in 2024. But in the rest of the City of Madison, Trump received 15%, 14%, and 15%, respectively. There are wards on the east side of Madison’s isthmus where Trump received fewer than 1 in 20 votes in 2024. But across UW-Madison’s student-occupied wards, more than 1 in 5 voted for Trump.
This solid Trump-voting minority on UW-Madison’s campus has done conservatives little good during April Supreme Court elections. Since 2020, Republican-endorsed Justice candidates have never gotten out of the single digits in the campus wards, actually lagging their performance in the rest of the city.
UW-La Crosse also stands out as a place with a noticeable (and growing) town-gown political divide. In La Crosse, the campus wards have grown much more conservative—giving Trump 35% in 2016, 41% in 2020, and 50% in 2024. These wards have always been more conservative than the rest of the city (at least during presidential elections), but the gap has grown from 2 percentage points in 2016 to 14 in 2024.
The town-gown divide runs in the opposite direction in Appleton, home to Lawrence University, a private liberal arts school and the state’s most Democratic campus. Here, Republican voters are less than half as common as in the rest of the city.
Milwaukee is home to two campuses with somewhat different political personalities.
Voters in the UW-Milwaukee campus wards have grown much more Democratic over the past decade, and they are now less Republican than the city as a whole. Trump won 25% in these wards in 2016, dropping to 22% in 2020 and 19% in 2024. Meanwhile, Trump support in the rest of the city grew from 18% to 20% to 21% across his three campaigns.
Apart from April elections, voters in the Marquette campus wards have consistently voted more conservatively than voters in the rest of Milwaukee. In 2024, this gap surged. Trump won 27% in the Marquette wards in 2016, 23% in 2020, and 33% in 2024.
Implications for November 2026
The basic dynamic in Wisconsin politics is that, while there are more Republicans than Democrats, Democrats dominate among the most reliable voters and Republicans depend on turning out people who only sometimes show up in November. This latter group apparently includes a large cohort of conservative-leaning but politically unengaged college students. To the extent that the past few elections hold any lessons, they might be this: potential conservative voters exist in meaningful numbers on Wisconsin’s college campuses, but Republicans face an uphill battle turning them out.
[i] The census is officially conducted on April 1. By that date in 2020 many college students had been sent home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Census Bureau went to considerable effort to count these students where they would’ve been under normal circumstances.
It is a longstanding tradition that the president of the United States gives a State of the Union address each year. Consider the Fall 2026 issue of Marquette Lawyer magazine a “state of the union” report issuing from Marquette Law School as Americans mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. But the magazine’s approach, a bit different from that in D.C., offers nonpartisan insights into the content of the Declaration itself, the dynamic realities of the American legal system, and the lives of the people of the union.
Yesterday evening I had the privilege of accepting, on behalf of Marquette University Law School, the American Bar Association’s 2026 Pro Bono Publico Award. The award, as 
