Heck and Esenberg: What’s Worse, Campaigning or Campaign Reform?

For Jay Heck, the disease needs a cure. For Rick Esenberg, it’s doubtful there is a disease and, even if there is, the cure is worse.

If Tuesday’s “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Eckstein Hall had been a meeting of foreign diplomats, the statement afterward would have described the session as “cordial but frank.”  Two of the most prominent Wisconsin voices in the debate about whether to and how to regulate money spent on political campaigning presented their views with wit and warmth, but with no masking their widely different positions.

Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, said elections in Wisconsin and nationally had devolved over the last several decades and regulation of election spending was a matter of restoring confidence in the political system.

Esenberg, a professor at Marquette University Law School and an attorney involved in a case currently challenging regulatory plans in Wisconsin, did not accept that the damage being done by current levels of spending was so serious. Limiting free speech related to elections presents, among many things, a constitutional problem and is a bad idea that often has unintended negative consequences. 

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Sentence Explanation in the Seventh Circuit: What’s Good for the Goose . . .

Ever since the Supreme Court converted the federal sentencing guidelines from mandatory to advisory in 2005, I’ve followed with particular interest the case law on how sentences must be explained in the new regime.  Even more specifically, I have focused on the question of when sentencing judges are required to respond expressly to defendants’ arguments for lenience.  (See, for example, my post here.)  I’ve also wondered about the flipside of that question — when must judges respond expressly to prosecutors’ arguments in aggravation? — but cases on this seem far less common.  Last week, though, the Seventh Circuit addressed an issue that seems closely related to my hypothetical question.

In United States v. Glosser (No. 08-4015), the judge made a promise to the defendant at his change-of-plea hearing that he would impose the statutory minimum 120-month sentence in the case, notwithstanding the prosecutor’s suggestion that the government might seek more.  And, indeed, it turned out that the government sought a 210-month sentence in light of firearms found at Glosser’s resident.  The judge, however, mostly stuck to his promise and imposed a 121-month sentence.  The government appealed. 

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Good Reasons and Bad Reasons to Start Your Own Practice

In early 2008, I left a great job as a senior associate at one of Wisconsin’s oldest, largest, and most prestigious firms to start my own practice across the Milwaukee River in an office share on Old World Third Street.  After a whole lot of work, it’s all coming together.  In the past two and a half years, I can’t begin to tell you how many lawyers I have spoken to who have told me that they too want to do this too.  But then they list a number of reasons why they aren’t ready yet and may never be ready.  I’m sure there are a number of lawyers out there who have the same thoughts, and maybe some of them are reading this blog (maybe even while they are supposed to be working billable hours).

So, rather than focus on new cases or a specific area of law, I am going to devote my month as guest blogger to issues associated with starting a law practice.  If my anecdotal evidence is correct, it is likely to have a wider appeal than anything that is substantively narrow.

This first week I will devote to the soul searching aspect of the decision.  The “why” aspect. 

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