Jenkins Competitors Advance to Finals

The teams in the 2025 Jenkins Honors Moot Court Competition have distinguished themselves in their excellent advocacy. Many thanks to John Caucutt and Daniel Underwood and the Marquette Moot Court Association for organizing the competition well. We appreciate all the judges who grade briefs and come to the Law School to hear the oral arguments; we could not host this competition without their assistance.

The following teams advanced to the quarterfinal round:

Team 9 – Sydney Kojis and Mikayla Collins

Team 10 – Elizabeth Hansen and Rachel Sweet

Team 19 – Ava Mares and George Certalic

Team 28 – Reese Gee and Anna Pyle

Team 36 – Mario Hernandez and Isabella Gonzalez

Team 40 – Isabella Barnard and Ananda Deacon

Team 41 – William Welder and Aaron Steines

Team 51 – Connor Reed and Suzy DeGuire

The competition was especially fierce at the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds. Two teams—William Welder and Aaron Steines, and Connor Reed and Suzy DeGuire—emerged successfully from those rounds and will compete on Tuesday evening at the Lubar Center.

Best of luck, teams!

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Resolving the Tension Between Agriculture and Water Quality in Wisconsin

Wisconsin is known for its invaluable array of water resources on the one hand and its heritage as an agricultural powerhouse on the other. At first glance, it seems that Wisconsin policymakers face a dilemma, because these two aspects of the state’s identity can be in tension with one another. The federal government’s most recent National Water Quality Assessment concluded that agricultural runoff and the like are the leading cause of adverse water quality impacts on rivers and streams, and the third-leading cause of such impacts on lakes. On March 18 (which also happened to be National Agriculture Day) the Marquette Water Law and Policy Initiative, part of the Law School’s broader Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, hosted an event to help illuminate a path forward for agriculture and water to coexist. The speakers at the event generally delivered a hopeful message anticipating improved cooperation among farmers, affected citizens, the conservation community, and state and local governments.

The event’s keynote speaker, Dr. Marin Skidmore of the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, presented the findings of her team’s study of the effectiveness of local (county-level) regulations targeted at controlling nonpoint source pollution from Wisconsin dairy farms. As Dr. Skidmore explained, by definition nonpoint source pollution does not emanate from a single point; rather, it typically consists of diffuse runoff across broad landscapes. In the case of agriculture, that runoff may carry with it fertilizer or manure that has been applied to farm fields and deposit those pollutants in surface waters. Agriculture is a major economic and cultural force in the state, she acknowledged, but it also often creates serious water quality problems resulting from the “enormous nutrient [manure] output coming from dairy production.” That can impact recreational activities and even public health, she said.

The pollutant load can cause hypoxia, or “dead zones” in surface waters, and in some Wisconsin communities, can contaminate drinking water supplies with elevated levels of nitrates and bacteria. This has led to substantial community opposition to large-scale “concentrated animal feeding operations” – defined by state law as an animal feeding operation with 1,000 animal units or more – in some parts of the state.

Skidmore and her team set out to find a way to test Wisconsin’s efforts to manage the pollution’s impacts while maintaining an industry so important to the state. Nonpoint source pollution is exceedingly difficult to control. It isn’t well regulated under federal or state laws, including the Clean Water Act, Skidmore said, partly because “we don’t have a reliable way to map and quantify the amount of pollution coming from one single farm.” As a result, policy makers can’t use traditional regulatory tools such as command-and-control regulation, pollution taxes, or a cap-and-trade system.

But there is hope, Skidmore said, because “Wisconsin is innovative.” Its leaders have tried solutions that other states haven’t. Skidmore cited the state’s farmer-led watershed groups, farmland preservation program, and water quality trading program as examples. But the program that most captured the attention of Skidmore and her research team was the state government’s decision to delegate the option to regulate manure management to county governments – a program unheard of in other states. The delegation was intended not as a substitute for state authority, but as a complement or addition to it. Perhaps the counties could serve as “laboratories of democracy” for the state, in the same way that the states have sometimes done for the federal government.

So what happened when counties got involved in writing and enforcing local manure management ordinances? By comparing many different county ordinances – and the resulting water quality benefits (or lack thereof) – Skidmore’s team found that some aspects of the ordinances had a measurable impact on water quality, while others did not. The most significant positive impact on water quality resulted from adding a requirement that farmers prepare a “nutrient management plan.” That effectively means a plan for the rate, timing, and method of nutrient application to farm fields. If farmers fine-tune those variables, they can dramatically reduce pollutant runoff to surface waters, Skidmore said, because a lot of the problem comes from nutrient overapplication above what the crop needs. That leaves the excess nutrients vulnerable to precipitation-induced runoff.

Developing a nutrient management plan can be a “light bulb moment” for some farmers, Skidmore found. It can significantly adjust their behavior in the near term and even save them money by decreasing the amounts of fertilizer applied to the fields. And because the state has offered some funding to incentivize the development of the plans, the process can be a win-win for farmers and the environment

Following Skidmore’s presentation, a panel of Wisconsin experts offered their own perspectives on the interface between agriculture and water quality.

Brian Weigel, the Deputy Administrator for the Division of External Services at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, noted that state governments have sometimes been caught in the middle of struggles between farmers, affected citizens, and environmentalists. “There are myriad opportunities for change,” he said, but that won’t happen until the various factions move forward together. DNR is trying to do its part, he said, by developing an office of agriculture and water quality with two goals: trying to communicate effectively with stakeholders, and connecting with governmental partners in neighboring agricultural states to explore best practices for science and policy. But government won’t have sufficient resources to do it alone, he predicted; society and culture need to change, with consumers demanding more sustainably-produced food, to really drive reforms.

“Farmers are the original environmentalists,” because they see firsthand the impacts of pollution on nearby drinking water sources, said Jason Mugnaini, Executive Director of Government Relations at the Wisconsin Farm Bureau. Mugnaini predicted that the farm community in the state will soon enter a time of transition, with farmers open to new conservation practices in part because of government-funded incentive programs. He conceded, though, that some farmers are afraid to seek compliance assistance because of concerns over enforcement actions that might result.

Sara Walling, the Water and Agriculture Program Director at Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy group that has often squared off in litigation with agricultural interests over water quality concerns, emphasized the need for a collaborative approach that includes both famers and affected citizens. “We recognize that there are a lot of farmers out there who are very interested in doing what they can to change the impacts they are having on water quality,” she said. Part of Clean Wisconsin’s role is helping to bridge some of the gaps in understanding the impacts of agriculture on water quality, Walling stated.

Cheryl Heilman, the DNR’s Chief Legal Counsel, reiterated that the agency’s focus is on protecting water quality. Existing laws aren’t enough to solve the problem, and even regulation at the county level has sometimes created a “patchwork” of requirements, with some very effective and others not. Like the other panelists, she emphasized the need for more mutual support among the factions. What can best drive such cooperation? “I think we should have more forums like this,” she said.

 Vide of the full program is available here.

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The 2025 Election Might be Wisconsin’s New April “Normal”

Democrats across the country hailed yesterday’s victory of Susan Crawford over Brad Schimel as a decisive rejection of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Certainly, Schimel embraced the connection between himself and the president throughout his campaign for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

As I look at the results, I am unconvinced that the April 2025 election represents a turn against Trump among voters who supported him in November. Instead, I think the real story might be something even worse for the Wisconsin GOP, if less thrilling for national Democrats. This might just be the new normal for April elections.

Crawford won 55.0% of the vote according to unofficial election-night data. In 2023, the Democratic-endorsed candidate won 55.4%, in 2020 55.2%, and in 2018 55.7%. The lone exception is 2019, when Brian Hagedorn (a swing vote, but supported by Republicans) won a narrow victory by holding the liberal candidate to 49.7%.

Doubtlessly, persuasion played some role in Crawford’s victory. As more data becomes available, we’ll be able to draw clearer conclusions about how much. But, at a high level, you don’t need a story about persuasion to explain this election. A ten-point victory for the liberal candidate has become the normal outcome in Wisconsin’s April elections. To understand why, we have to look at the two party’s changing relationship to voter turnout.

Voter Turnout has Never Been Higher

Half of Wisconsin adults voted in the April 2025 general election for the state supreme court. It is difficult to emphasize how unusually large this turnout was. In all likelihood, this is the greatest share of adults to ever vote in one of the state’s April elections. Two years ago, in April 2023, 40% of adults voted in the election of Janet Protasiewicz which flipped the ideological balance of the court.

That year’s turnout was itself extremely high for a spring election not featuring a presidential primary. Turnout is typically highest when the spring election coincides with contested presidential primaries for both parties, as last occurred in 2016. In that year, about 47% of adults voted. We have to go all the way back to the 1960s to find similarly high levels of turnout among the voting age population, which did not yet include 18-20 year olds.

In fact, Wisconsin’s 50% turnout rate in the formally nonpartisan April 2025 election was higher than the adult turnout rate of 38 states in the 2022 midterms.

The sky high turnout this April is part of a general trend in Wisconsin politics throughout the years since Trump’s first election. The only gubernatorial election with a higher adult turnout rate than 2022 was 2018. Among presidential elections,  2024 had the highest turnout on record (2020 was the third highest, following 2004).

Wisconsin’s electorate is just plain extremely engaged. Whether measured as a share of total or eligible adults, no state had a higher turnout that Wisconsin in 2024. Here’s another superlative: since 1856, when the modern party system began, no state has been as closely divided between Democrats and Republicans across three consecutive presidential elections as Wisconsin in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Scour American history and you’ll struggle to find an example of state as hyper-engaged with, and narrowly divided by, electoral politics as Wisconsin in the present moment.

Most observers, myself included, think Wisconsin’s high turnout in 2024 helped push Trump to his narrow victory, thanks to his particular popularity among infrequent voters. In April 2025, high turnout pushed the Democratic-endorsed candidate Susan Crawford to a 10-point victory over the Republican-endorsee, Brad Schimel.

If this seems like a paradox, consider how different the two “high turnout” electorates were. Just over a million more people voted in November 2024 than April 2025. A majority of the million voters who stayed home are probably Republicans, or at least Trump supporters.

Here’s a crude, but useful, mental model. Imagining lining up all of Wisconsin’s roughly 3.4 million voters in order of likelihood to vote. The first million lean most strongly Democratic, the next million less so, and the final million tilt more Republican. In February 2025, about half a million voters showed up to vote in the State Superintendent primary and 65% of them voted for Democratic-aligned candidates. In April 2025, 2.4 million participated and 55% voted for the liberal. In November 2024, 3.4 million voted, and the electorate was evenly divided, giving both Trump and Tammy Baldwin 1-point victories.

When I was a college student, in the early 2010s, the mantra among Democrats was “If everyone votes, we win.” When 2.2 million people voted in Wisconsin’s 2010 gubernatorial election, Republican Scott Walker won by 7 points. When 3.1 million people voted in Wisconsin’s 2012 presidential election, Obama won by 6 points. Two years later, when 2.4 million voted, Walker won reelection by 6 points.

Republican strength in lower-turnout elections gave them a structural edge in the state Supreme Court, whose elections may only be held in April. Conservative candidates won 4 of 6 such races held from 2008 through 2016, and the 2017 reelection of a conservative justice wasn’t even contested by a liberal. In the years since 2017, however, Democratic-backed candidates have gone 4 for 5. If they win the next two races in 2026 and 2027, they could hold a 6-1 majority on the court.

I can’t tell if either party has fully internalized this shift yet. Musk’s high-profile  shenanigans—offering voters cash to pose with photos of Schimel and advertising random drawings of $1 million prizes—struck me as the kind of thing a campaign might self-consciously do to appeal to low propensity voters.

On the other hand, both Trump and Musk celebrated the landslide passage of a referendum adding Wisconsin’s existing photo ID voting requirement to the state constitution. Trump wrote, “This is a BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS, MAYBE THE BIGGEST WIN OF THE NIGHT. IT SHOULD ALLOW US TO WIN WISCONSIN, LIKE I JUST DID IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, FOR MANY YEARS TO COME!”

Recently, I completed my own analysis of the photo ID requirement’s impact on voting access in Wisconsin. My conclusion was that almost everyone has such an ID, so the practical effect of the requirement is small. Its introduction in 2016 has not prevented the state from setting turnout records.

Still, certain populations are less likely to hold an ID. These include poor people and young people not enrolled in college—decreasingly core Democratic constituencies. All else being equal, poor Black adults in Wisconsin are actually more likely to have a photo ID than poor white adults. I suspect this reflects concerted efforts by Democrats and their allies to help Black residents get their needed identification documents.

Hurdles to convenient voting access once worked to the benefit of the Republican party in Wisconsin, whether deliberately or not. Now, the calculus appears reversed. The best chances for a GOP candidate will appear in an electorate of 3 million or more. As any Democrat working on campaigns in the Obama years could tell you, winning elections by maximizing turnout is possible, but hard.

Continue ReadingThe 2025 Election Might be Wisconsin’s New April “Normal”