Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

US Supreme Court Review: Crime and Causation

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 27, 2014
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Federal Criminal Law & Process Federal Sentencing Judges & Judicial Process Public U.S. Supreme Court

(This is the first post in our series, Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Term. Other posts, when they appear, can be found here.) The Court’s criminal docket this term included two interesting causation cases that came to somewhat different conclusions. The cases were Burrage v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 881, which dealt with criminal responsibility for a drug-related death, and Paroline v. United States, 134 S. Ct. 1710, which dealt with restitution for a child pornography victim. In both cases, the Court had to grapple with tensions between traditional, narrow understandings of causal responsibility in the law and a natural human desire to hold bad actors accountable for tragic harms with which they seem to have some connection, even if that connection is a tenuous or uncertain one.

Burrage nicely illustrates the tension.

Series: Looking Back at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 Term

Post author:Bruce E. Boyden
Post published:June 27, 2014
Post category:Public U.S. Supreme Court

I’m excited to announce a new summer series here at the Marquette Law Faculty Blog, one in which members of our faculty will be analyzing some of the most important U.S. Supreme Court decisions in their areas from the term that just concluded. Our first post is from Michael O’Hear on Burrage v. United States and Paroline v. United States, two important criminal law cases decided in January and April 2014, respectively. Posts in the series will have titles starting with “US Supreme Court Review.”

An Expanded Role for Jay Ranney as Schoone Visiting Fellow

Post author:Joseph D. Kearney
Post published:June 26, 2014
Post category:Marquette Law School Public

ranney-TN As set forth in this release, the Law School has appointed Joseph A. Ranney as its Adrian P. Schoone Visiting Fellow in Wisconsin Law. Ranney will use his fellowship to write a book that examines the role states have played in the evolution of American law, with a focus on the contributions made by Wisconsin. Ranney is (and will continue to be) a partner at DeWitt, Ross & Stevens, S.C., in Madison and a longtime member of Marquette University Law School’s part-time faculty. His previous books include Trusting Nothing to Providence: A History of Wisconsin’s Legal System (1998), considered the leading legal history of the state, and In the Wake of Slavery (2006), examining the path of the law and its effects in the Reconstruction-era South. He is also well known to the Wisconsin bar for his frequent contributions to Wisconsin Lawyer, the official magazine of the State Bar of Wisconsin, and he has made a number of contributions to the Marquette Law Review. The fellowship is made possible by the Law School’s Adrian P. Schoone Fund for the Study of Wisconsin Law and Legal Institutions, announced last year, and its fruits no doubt will include contributions by Jay Ranney to this faculty blog during the course of his fellowship. It is a pleasure to welcome him to his new role.