19th Annual Howard B. Eisenberg Do-Gooders’ Auction—An Interview with PILS Fellow Garrett Soberalski

The 19th Annual Howard B. Eisenberg Do-Gooders’ Auction on behalf of the Law School’s Public Interest Law Society (PILS) will be held on February 10 at the Law School. Proceeds from the event go to support PILS Fellowships to enable Marquette law students to do public interest work in the summer. Garrett Soberalski, a current law student, shares his experience here as a PILS Fellow.

Where did you work as a PILS Fellow?

This past summer I worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Milwaukee Field Office (HUD).

What kind of work did you do there?

The bulk of my time was spent assisting various Equal Opportunity Specialists in the office investigate fair housing complaints and prepare determinations regarding fair housing complaints. I also performed research for two larger matters that may still be under investigation, so I will not discuss those activities further. Overall, it was a lot of research and writing, with some field investigations from time to time.

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Tommy Thompson to Critics: Get Out of My Way

It was near the end of Mike Gousha’s interview with US Senate candidate Tommy Thompson. Alluding to critics, many from the right, Gousha asked, “So when they say –and they do say — Tommy Thompson is part of the problem in Washington, not part of the solution, you say?”

“Get out of my way,” Thompson answered quickly.

If you think that at 70, the political fire inside Thompson has diminished, you should have seen him during the “On the Issues” session with Gousha, the Law School’s distinguished fellow in law and public policy at Eckstein Hall on Thursday. (In fact, you can, by clicking here for the video.)

The man elected governor of Wisconsin four times before serving four years as US Secretary of Health and Human Services was every bit the forceful, self-confident, optimistic, almost swaggering figure before about 200 people that Wisconsinites knew so well in the 1980s and 1990s.

When Gousha said other people running for the open US Senate seat wanted the job as much as Thompson did, Thompson said, “I don’t think so.”

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The Many Faces of Adoption

Recent news reports describe a new twist in adoption practice. According to the reports John Goodman, a wealthy Florida man, has adopted his 42 year old girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to protect some of his assets against possible losses in a wrongful death action filed against him. Goodman is alleged to have been drunk at the time he ran a stop sign, resulting in an accident that killed another man. Prior to the adoption of his girlfriend, Goodman had set up a trust for his two minor children, which the girlfriend may now share in as an adopted child, and news reports say that, under Florida law, the parents of the deceased man could not claim wrongful death damages from that trust.

When most people hear the word “adoption,” they picture what I often call the “Little Orphan Annie” model. You will recall in the Broadway play “Annie,” and before that in the “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip, Annie was only an infant when she was abandoned on the orphanage steps by her poor parents. After many adventures, Annie was adopted by Daddy Warbucks, a kind man with the emotional and economic resources to provide Annie with a real, forever home. Similarly, many people think of adoption mainly as a procedure for bringing babies and young children into forever families who will love and protect them. Although adoption takes that form for many people, in fact adoptions of older children and of stepchildren (adopted by second spouses to one of the children’s birth parents) are becoming more and more common.

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