Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Dean Howard Eisenberg in His Own Voice

Post author:Janine P. Geske
Post published:August 16, 2011
Post category:Legal Practice Marquette Law School History Public Speakers at Marquette

One of the activities that many of us faculty members undertake during the summer months is to clean out some drawers and shelves. While recently tackling that chore, I was thrilled to find an old tape from a 1999 conference we put on at the law school on “Spirituality and Work.” I had forgotten that Dean Howard Eisenberg was the luncheon keynote speaker that day. What a thrill for me to listen to the tape and to hear Howard speak about one of his favorite themes, “What Is a Nice Jewish Boy Doing in a Place Like This.” He talks about his deanship and his views on spirituality and the legal profession. I thought others might enjoy having the opportunity to hear Howard, in his own words, speaking from his heart. With the level of incivility in our professional and political world, I believe his words are probably even more relevant today than they were when he spoke them twelve years ago. Here is the link to that talk.

Enjoy!

An Aggressive Message From Wisconsin

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:August 10, 2011
Post category:Political Processes & Rhetoric Public

I got an invitation from a producer at CNN to write a comment for their Web site on the state Senate recall elections Tuesday. So I took them up on it. Here’s the start of what I said:

Milwaukee, Wisconsin (CNN) — Wisconsin — so polarized, so evenly split, so politically inflamed — sent a message to the nation Tuesday night.

Republicans will say it is a message that vindicates the strong action taken by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican majorities in both houses of the Wisconsin legislature to hold down spending and strip formerly powerful public employee unions of all but a bit of their power. The Republican actions became a national sensation in February when Democratic senators fled the state for three weeks and tens of thousands of people protested daily at the state Capitol.

Democrats will point to their victories in ousting two Republicans from the state Senate and to how much better they did on Republican turf than in the November 2010 statewide elections. They showed that momentum has swung their way, they will say.

As a pretty impartial person, my reading of the dominant message is: We live in polarizing, sharply split, inflamed times when it comes to politics. And that’s only getting more intense. . . .

For the rest of the comment, click here.

When the Witness Woofs

Post author:Judith G. McMullen
Post published:August 10, 2011
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Family Law Judges & Judicial Process Public

When a New York teenager had to testify against her father, claiming he raped and impregnated her, she shared the witness box with a helper. According to The New York Times, that helper was Rosie, a specially trained golden retriever who comforts and encourages traumatized or stressed individuals. Rosie has a highly developed sense of empathy, and will nuzzle, snuggle or lean against someone who is experiencing stress or trauma. Psychologists sing the praises of service dogs like her, and courts in several states have ruled that witnesses who are especially vulnerable, such as children in sexual abuse cases, may be accompanied by canine helpers.

As you might imagine, approval of Rosie and dogs like her is not universal. Everyone agrees that Rosie is adorable, but therein lies part of the alleged problem. Defense attorneys fear that Rosie gives credibility to the child witness that may or may not be justified. One of the public defenders in the case, David S. Martin, protested that each time the child witness stroked the dog’s fur, “it sent an unconscious message to the jury that she was under stress because she was telling the truth,” adding “There is no way for me to cross-examine the dog.” Although the lawyer for the prosecution in this case refused to comment about Rosie for the article, Ellen O’Neill-Stephens, a Seattle prosecutor who is a proponent of dog-helpers in court, said “Sometimes the dog means the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.”

The past several decades have seen a great deal of discussion about the difficulty of dealing with child witnesses in a criminal trial, and there have been many judicial experiments – some effective and some not.