Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Is it Time to Bring Back the Marquette Law School Baseball Team?

Post author:J. Gordon Hylton
Post published:August 7, 2014
Post category:Marquette Law School Public Sports & Law

Every now and then the debate over whether or not Marquette should re-establish its varsity football team gets revived. Once a respected participant in the highest level of college football, Marquette unceremoniously dropped football in 1960. (See also here.)

In spite of its long tradition in sports law, it is a not well known fact that our law school once had its own baseball team. In his The Rise of Milwaukee Baseball: The Cream City from Midwestern Outpost to the Major Leagues, 1859-1901 (p. 324), Milwaukee historian Dennis Pajot notes that in 1895, a team called The Milwaukee Law Class competed with the city’s other amateur teams.

The Milwaukee Law Class, organized by the city’s law students in 1892, was Milwaukee’s first law school. In the mid-1890’s, its name was changed to the Milwaukee Law School, and in 1908, it was acquired by Marquette University. This is why the law school celebrated its centennial in 1992. (A second centennial celebration in 2008 marked the 100^th anniversary of Marquette’s acquisition of the Milwaukee Law Class/School.)

Unfortunately, we do not know very much about the 1895 team, except that the scores of some of its games were listed in Milwaukee newspapers that year. It is, of course, possible that the team began play before 1895, but with a lower profile. If it did originate before 1895, it seems likely that one of the founders and original players on the Law Class team would have been Walter Schinz.

Schinz (born 1874) was one of the founders of the Law Class in 1892 and later a prominent 20^th century Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge. He was also was an avid baseball player during his youth and an enthusiastic fan of the national pastime until his death in 1957. Schinz’ Milwaukee Sentinel obituary devoted much of its content to the judge’s life-long love of baseball that began as a sandlot player in Milwaukee in the 1880’s.

There is no reason to believe that the Milwaukee Law Class baseball team was an exceptionally powerful club. At that point, the school probably had somewhere between 20 and 40 students, some of whom were probably fairly athletic but many of whom were probably not. The fact that there is no record of the team after 1895, suggests that its success was probably limited.

In contrast, the Milwaukee Medical College baseball team, which played from at least 1894 into the early 20^th century, appears to have been a more powerful club. (The Milwaukee Medical College was an independent medical school which opened in 1894 and was taken over by Marquette University in 1907.)

In 1901, the Medical College team was a solid enough amateur club to have played the American League’s Milwaukee Brewers in an exhibition game just before the opening of the 1901 major league season. (The Brewers apparently won the game in a convincing fashion.)

The 1901 season was the first year that the American League played as a major league, and the Brewers were one of its original eight teams. Unfortunately, a disappointing last place finish (48-89) and a league low attendance record led to the team being transferred to St. Louis in 1902, where the Brewers became the ill-fated St. Louis Browns (who are now the Baltimore Orioles).

After the 1908 acquisition of the Milwaukee Law School by Marquette University law students were eligible to play on the Marquette varsity team, and a number, including future sports lawyer and Congressman Ray Cannon, apparently did.

US Supreme Court Review: Bond v. United States

Post author:Ryan Scoville
Post published:July 25, 2014
Post category:Constitutional Law International Law & Diplomacy Public

(This is another post in our series, Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Term.)

Continuing with this blog’s coverage of the recently concluded Supreme Court term, I’ll offer a few thoughts on the decision in Bond v. United States, which addressed a challenge to a statute that Congress passed in 1998 to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention (“CWC”). Most have heard about the underlying facts: After finding out that her husband was the father of her best friend’s soon-to-be-born child, Carol Anne Bond tried to poison the friend with 10-chloro-10H-phenoxarsine and potassium dichromate. This plan didn’t work, but the authorities found out about it and prosecuted Ms. Bond under 18 U.S.C. § 229(a) for possession and use of a “chemical weapon.” Bond then entered a conditional guilty plea that preserved her right to appeal and, after a lot of other litigation, made two arguments before the Supreme Court. First, she contended that Section 229(a) doesn’t apply because she didn’t use 10-chloro-10H-phenoxarsine and potassium dichromate as “chemical weapons” within the meaning of the statute. Second, she argued that the statute is invalid even if it applies because it exceeds the enumerated powers of Congress and intrudes upon powers that the Tenth Amendment reserves for the states.

Two-Thirds of Wisconsinites Support More Flexibility for Prisoner Releases

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:July 24, 2014
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

In 1998, Wisconsin adopted what may have been the nation’s most rigid truth-in-sentencing law, eliminating parole across the board and declining to put into place any alternative system of back-end release flexibility, such as credits for good behavior in prison. Subsequent reforms to this system have been either short-lived or very modest in scope. However, new results from the Marquette Law School Poll confirm and strengthen findings from other recent surveys that Wisconsin residents would actually welcome a more flexible system.

As I noted in an earlier post, the Law School Poll has asked Wisconsinites their views about criminal-justice policies in each of the past three summers. Although the Poll has revealed significant support for truth in sentencing, it has also revealed comparable or even greater support for enhanced flexibility.

In 2012, Poll results included the following:

85% of respondents agreed that “criminals who have genuinely turned their lives around deserve a second chance.”
67% agreed that “Wisconsin should recognize prisoners’ rehabilitative accomplishments by awarding credits toward early release.”
55% agreed that “once a prisoner has served at least half of his term, he should be released from prison and given a less costly form of punishment if he can demonstrate that he is no longer a threat to society.”