An Interview with Professor Jake Carpenter

Carpenter

[Editor’s Note: This blog is the fourth in a series of interviews with faculty and staff at the Law School.]

Professor Carpenter teaches Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research courses at Marquette Law School. Outside of the law school, Professor Carpenter presents at writing conferences across the country, teaches Continuing Legal Education courses for the Illinois Attorney General’s offices in Chicago and Springfield, Illinois, and co-teaches a course, Writing Persuasive Briefs, for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy (NITA). Professor Carpenter is also active on various committees of the Legal Writing Institute.  Before teaching, Professor Carpenter was a civil litigator.

Prior to practicing law, Professor Carpenter was a member of the law review and graduated with honors from Mercer University School of Law. At Mercer, he received the Woodruff Scholarship, the law school’s top scholarship award. Professor Carpenter graduated with honors from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. While at DePauw, Carpenter was named an All-American in track.

Question: How did you first become interested in teaching legal writing? 

I became interested in legal writing when I started practicing law and learned how much of a daily, critical role writing plays in a lawyer’s job.  Fortunately, I had some colleagues in my firm who were great attorneys, great writers, and great mentors.  I often saw the difference a strong brief made compared to a poorly written brief, and I began to view writing briefs as a fun challenge.  After gaining confidence and experience, I began to really enjoy all aspects of writing briefs.  When I decided to pursue teaching at a law school, I wanted to teach legal writing courses because researching and writing briefs were what I enjoyed most about practicing law.  I wanted to help students develop in those areas because it’s such an integral part of practicing law.

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“With Friends Like These . . .”: New Critiques of Graham and Miller

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama (2012) undoubtedly constitute the most important developments in Eighth Amendment law over the past decade. Graham banned life-without -parole (LWOP) sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses, while Miller prohibited mandatory LWOP for all juvenile offenders, even those convicted of murder. I have a lengthy analysis of the two decisions in this recently published article.

A special issue of the New Criminal Law Review now offers a pair of interesting critiques of Graham and Miller. Interestingly, both authors seem sympathetic to the bottom-line holdings of the two decisions, but they nonetheless disagree with central aspects of the Court’s reasoning (and, to some extent, also with one another). Both focus their criticisms on the Court’s use of scientific evidence regarding the differences between adolescent and adult brain functioning.

The more radical perspective comes from Mark Fondacaro, a psychologist who has emerged as a leading critic of retributive responses to crime and advocate for scientifically informed risk-management strategies.  

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

Vintage BaseballEvery 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 100th 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 20th 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 20th 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.

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