Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

A New and Important Wave of MPS Principals

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:May 20, 2011
Post category:Education & Law Milwaukee Public Schools Public

Milwaukee Schools Superintendent Gregory Thornton has released the first wave of his selections for new principals for Milwaukee Public Schools. As I described in a Journal Sentinel column a few weeks ago, Thornton is facing an unusual number of principal vacancies, in large part because of retirements triggered by the changes Republican Gov. Scott Walker is making to educational spending and public employment benefits.

One high-profile position on the new list: Mike Roemer was chosen to be principal of Ronald Reagan High School. The south side school, with its full international baccalaureate program, has been one of the brightest success stories in MPS in the last decade. Its high-profile founding principal, Julia D’Amato, retired several months ago. Roemer was the assistant principal under D’Amato and has been acting principal since she left. The school community lobbied hard for him to get the job.

Overall, the list of new principals includes four existing principals who are getting new or amended assignments and 17 people being promoted or hired to principal positions. The reassigned principals are appointed at Thornton’s discretion, but the promotions and new hires have to be approved by the School Board. A board committee will take up the recommendations at a meeting Tuesday.

The list can be viewed by going to this Web page and clicking on “5-24-11 AFP Blue Book Advance Copy” on the right side of the page. Then click on Item 3 on the left hand side of the document that comes up.

SCOWIS Approves LWOP for 14-Year-Old Killers

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:May 20, 2011
Post category:Constitutional Interpretation Criminal Law & Process U.S. Supreme Court Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process Wisconsin Supreme Court

Today, in State v. Ninham, 2011 WI 33, the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved the sentence of life without possibility of parole for fourteen-year-olds who are convicted of first-degree intentional homicide. The decision rests on a narrow reading of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark holding last year in Graham v. Florida, in which the Court outlawed LWOP for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes. Since Graham, lower courts across the country have been wrestling with the implications of the decision for other categories of offenses and offenders.

Ninham’s challenge was framed as a categorical challenge to the use of LWOP against fourteen-year-olds. As such, the challenge was appropriately assessed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court using the two-prong analysis of Graham, (1) determining whether there is a national consensus against the challenged practice, and (2) exercising independent judgment as to whether the practice constitutes an unconstitutionally severe punishment.

As to the first prong, although a large majority of states authorize LWOP for fourteen-year-olds, the sentence is in practice very infrequently imposed:

Marquette Honors Noted Legal Historian Paul Prucha, S.J.

Post author:J. Gordon Hylton
Post published:May 20, 2011
Post category:Marquette Law School

On Thursday, May 19, Marquette University honored Prof. Emeritus Francis Paul Prucha, S.J. with a special reception in at the Raynor Library Archives. The event was timed to mark Prof. Prucha’s ninetieth birthday and the fiftieth anniversary of his appointment to the Marquette faculty, as well as the sixtieth anniversary of his entrance into the Jesuit Order.

Prucha is the preeminent scholar of the modern era on the subject of United States government-Native American relations. His numerous works include The Indian in American History (1971); Americanizing the American Indians (1973); The Dawes Act and the Allotment of Indian Lands (1973); The Churches and the Indian Schools, 1888-1912 (1979); The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (1985), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History; and American Indian Treaties: The History of a Political Anomaly (1994).

Father Prucha was born in River Falls, Wisconsin in 1921.

He earned his bachelor’s degree from River Falls State Teachers College (now UW-River Falls) in 1941, and after stints as a high school teacher and an Army Air corpsman, he enrolled in the graduate program in history at the University of Minnesota, from which he received an M.A. degree in 1947. He then transferred to Harvard University from which he received his PhD in 1950.

After receiving his PhD, Prucha entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained as a priest in 1957. He joined the Marquette History Department in 1960. Because of the work of Prucha and colleagues like Frank Klement and Athan Theoharis, Marquette became a center of American legal-historical studies in the central United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Prof. Prucha took emeritus status in 1988, but has continued to live and work at Marquette.

Although never a member of the law school faculty Father Prucha was a regular visitor to the law school library and a mentor to a number of law school faculty, including Professors Idleman and Hylton. He is also the recipient of six honorary doctoral degrees.