The Constitutional Challenge to Act 10 is Serious

On Friday, Judge Juan Colas issued a ruling that struck down Act 10, the “Budget Repair Bill,” on the grounds that the law violates the Wisconsin and U.S. Constitutions.  In essence, he held that the law differentiates between entities that represent public employees in collective bargaining — imposing conditions on certain bargaining entities but not others – and that the State had failed to advance a sufficient justification for this disparate treatment.  According to Judge Colas, the differential treatment of bargaining entities violated the First Amendment right of the affected unions to association and expression, and it also violated the Equal Protection Clause.  Judge Colas also held that the law violates the Home Rule provisions of the Wisconsin Constitution by dictating rules for Milwaukee that the law did not apply to other municipalities.

The reaction to the ruling from the Walker Administration – that Judge Colas is a “liberal Dane County judge” — was as hollow as it was predictable.  Some supporters of the Governor view the judiciary as an obstacle to their political agenda.  Therefore, judges who do not agree with the Administration’s legal arguments become, in their mind, opponents who must be demonized (like Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi) or else targeted with frivolous disciplinary complaints.

Clearly, some supporters of the Walker Administration have a difficult time separating the political debate over Act 10 from the separate legal debate over its contents.

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Reading and Briefing Cases Part 2

Reading and briefing cases is an important part of the learning process in law school, as discussed in Part 1 of this blog series. In this blog, various Marquette legal writing faculty discuss some of their favorite tips for effective reading and briefing.

Professor Rebecca Blemberg

When you have finished reading a case, write down the question or questions the court answered. Then fill in the blanks in this sentence: The court held _______________ because ________________. Even if you’re not entirely sure what the court’s reasoning was, make an educated guess. Then consider the following. Was the court explicit in its reasoning? If so, mark or highlight the explicit rationale for the holding. Is the reasoning implicit? If so, mark or highlight the places where you find the court hinting at its rationale. Are you making an educated guess or “reading between the lines” to find the court’s reasoning? If so, make a list of a few reasons for your educated guess. The reasons can be related to the facts of the case, public policy, language choices by the court, the court’s use of authority, etc.

Look up every unfamiliar word you encounter in a case, especially legal terms. Read with access to a law dictionary. Eventually, you will look up terms far less often.

Professor Jacob Carpenter

One piece of advice I would consider is to read a case at least twice, briefing it only after you’ve fully read it at least once. This may not be as necessary for upper-level students, but for 1Ls, I think it is important. Otherwise, if a person briefs a case as she first reads it, the brief often ends up including extraneous facts and dicta that aren’t helpful to the brief. Once the reader finishes reading the case, the reader often has to go back and cross out chunks of information initially included in the brief. And, the brief often ends up being disorganized. This may be less of a problem now that most students brief cases with their laptops instead of by hand. But, I think it is still helpful.

Also, waiting to brief the case until you’ve already read it allows you to focus more on understanding the case itself during the first read, and then during the second read you can focus on getting the crucial information down into your brief in an organized, concise way. I also think it helps you remember the case better when called on in class or when revisiting the case as you prepare outlines later in the semester.

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Skills Gap Holds Back Wisconsin’s Economy, Sullivan Says

Tim Sullivan has a simple definition of the skills gap in Wisconsin. “We have jobs available but no workers qualified to fill those jobs,” Sullivan told Mike Gousha, Marquette Law School’s Distinguished Fellow in Law and Public Policy, during an “On the Issues” session on Thursday. “Quite frankly, it stifles economic development.” Sullivan called the gap “probably the most important thing to kill economic development” in Wisconsin.

When Bucyrus International was sold in 2011 to Caterpillar, Sullivan, who had been CEO and president of the South Milwaukee-based industrial giant, came away in a good personal position. He could have chosen to leave the spotlight. He decided not to seek public office, despite encouragement to do so. But he did not walk away from his willingness to be involved in trying to close that skills gap and change other things that are hurting economic development in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.

Now an unpaid special consultant to Gov. Scott Walker on workforce development and education issues, Sullivan recently issued a report, “The Road Ahead: Restoring Wisconsin’s Workforce Development” that is likely to spur legislative proposals and changes on other fronts in coming months.

Describing what he found in compiling the report, Sullivan told the audience in Eckstein Hall’s Appellate Courtroom that there are more than 600 agencies in the state working on economic development which ought to be reduced to nine and that there is no one with a handle on reliable, up-to-the-minute data on available jobs in the state when software systems that can provide such information are being used elsewhere and can have large benefits.

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