Pot, Politics, and the New Center

The headlines about the newest Marquette Law School Poll are focusing on the 2014 race for governor and that’s certainly no surprise. Let’s be honest. For the news media (I’m still a member), the horserace is catnip. We can’t resist. But there’s another question in the Poll that may generate—forgive me—some buzz of its own. “Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” Of the 400 people who responded, 50 per cent said yes, marijuana should be legal. Forty-five per cent said it should not. (See question 33 of the poll results here.)

Surprising? Perhaps. But why is it significant? To be sure, marijuana will not be a major issue in next year’s elections in Wisconsin. We’re not about to become the next Colorado or Washington, where in statewide referenda voters made recreational pot use legal. We’re also not about to join the list of 20 states that permit marijuana for medical use, although two Democratic state lawmakers, Jon Erpenbach and Chris Taylor, are proposing we do just that. Erpenbach and Taylor say the public is ahead of the politicians on this one, and the Marquette Law School Poll suggests they may be right. Furthermore, a recent Gallup Poll found even stronger support for legalizing marijuana. For the first time ever, a clear majority of Americans, 58 percent, favored legalization.

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Thoughts on the Holder Address: Two Cheers for the New Paradigm

In August, Attorney General Eric Holder delivered a widely noted address to the American Bar Association that seemed to promise significant changes in federal prosecutorial policies.  I wrote these reactions for the Federal Sentencing Reporter.

Following decades in which the U.S. Department of Justice has consistently advocated for a rigid and harsh legalism in criminal justice policy—in which DOJ, in the name of abstract principles of national uniformity, has willfully disregarded the devastating impact of its charging, plea-bargaining, and sentencing practices on real-life human beings—Attorney General Holder’s ABA address seems a breath of fresh air. He calls for a more flexible federal criminal justice system, in which prosecutorial charging priorities are more specifically tailored to meet local needs, in which sentencing is more individualized to the offender and prosecutors sometimes forego mandatory minimum sentences, and in which individual U.S. Attorney Offices experiment with new diversion programs as an alternative to conventional case-processing. Holder believes—correctly, I think—that a more flexible and pragmatic system can achieve better public-safety results at less cost than a system in which preserving the integrity of the federal sentencing guidelines is the overriding value.

Through Holder’s address, DOJ offers its most prominent and unequivocal endorsement yet of an emerging new criminal justice paradigm.  

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Moot Court and Brittany Kachingwe: A Love Story

I came to Marquette for the Sports Law program.  If anyone asked me what I wanted to do with my law degree I simply stated that I wanted to be the next Brian Cashman.  I worked in sports throughout college and for two years after.  When I got into Marquette, after I stopped crying of happiness (true story), I told myself that I would keep my mind open to other legal paths.  I can safely say, wholeheartedly, that Appellate Writing and Advocacy changed my life.  When I walked into that class I physically, metaphorically, and literally fell in love with appellate litigation and moot court (physically only in the sense that I am super clumsy and probably fell over and broke something).   If moot court were a person we would get married in an appellate courtroom, officiated by Justice Scalia, and instead of “I do” we would say, “May it please the court.”  To follow is the greatest love story you have ever read.  This post puts love stories such as Twilight, The Notebook, and Kim Kardashian/Kanye West to shame.  Here is the love story of Brittany Skye Kachingwe and Madam Moot Court. 

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