Best of the Blogs

This week: Those who don’t do, can’t teach? Also, an unconstitutional village ordinance on real estate for-sale signs may serve as a symbol of racial integration; the surprising stem cell research injunction; and is there a “private action” requirement in the Constitution?

First, it’s recruiting season for new law professors, which means that this week it was time for the perennial debate over the composition of law faculties. This time it was kicked off by Georgetown adjunct professor Brent Newton with his article, posted on SSRN, entitled “Preaching What They Don’t Practice: Why Law Faculties’ Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy.” That was followed by comments from Stephen Bainbridge, Joe Hodnicki, Jonathan Adler, Rick Garnett, Kristen Holmquist, and Paul Horwitz. (I myself have weighed in on previous iterations of this debate.) One thing that struck me as missing from all of this commentary, much of it thoughtful, was any mention of the notion of law school degrees as positional goods.

Sarah Waldeck posted the fourth and final installment in her fascinating series on a Chicago suburb that has persisted in retaining, and apparently enforcing, a clearly unconstitutional village ordinance banning real estate for-sale signs. A taste:

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New Comments Address Fraud Sentencing and Deferred Prosecution Agreements

The latest issue of the Marquette Law Review features a student comment by Ryan Parsons on the treatment of “temporary victims” under the federal sentencing guidelines.  In crimes such as bank fraud, individual accountholders that have been defrauded are often reimbursed by the bank and, therefore, made economically whole.  Such reimbursed accountholders are often ignored for purposes of sentencing enhancement, even though reimbursement may not occur without time and effort expended by these temporary victims.  Parsons describes how various courts have dealt with this phenomenon, as well as the Federal Sentencing Commission’s recent decision to include all such temporary victims in the enhancement calculation regardless of whether the defrauded accountholders even knew about the fraud.  Parsons argues that in order for a sentence to accurately reflect the severity of the crime, temporary victims should be taken into account to the extent that they suffered actual, monetizable losses (e.g., time spent pursuing mitigation).

This issue also includes Rachel Delaney’s comment analyzing the use of deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) in the corporate crime context, ultimately calling for congressional regulation of prosecutorial discretion.  

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The Dedication of Sensenbrenner Hall

Today is the 86th anniversary of the dedication of the former Marquette law building now known as Sensenbrenner Hall.  On Wednesday, August 27, 1924, a formal ceremony was held to mark the completion of the new law school building, known then only as the Law Building, shortly before the start of the 1924-25 academic year.

The new building, constructed just in front of the previous law school building, the Mackie Mansion, had been two years in the making.  Its completion helped symbolize the arrival of Marquette into the first rank of American law schools.   As the university proclaimed, “The School of Law of Marquette University has entered upon a new era.”

According to the Associated Press, the event was attended by “a great crowd of former students, current students, lawyers, judges, and state officials.” The ceremony began at 10:30 a.m. with an invocation by the Rev. Hugh McMahon, S.J., the regent of the law school.  After that, the keys to the law school were ceremonially presented to Dean Max Schoetz by the university’s president, the Rev. Albert C. Fox, S.J.  Fox lauded the accomplishments of the law school over the previous 30 years (indicating that he dated the law school’s beginnings to the Milwaukee Law School) and asked Schoetz to teach future students “that it is the law which has made us free and that there is no freedom deserving the name, save under the law.”

After remarks by Schoetz, who chaired the program, the dedicatory address was delivered by Justice Burr W. Jones of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.  His address was followed by remarks by William D. Thompson, the president of the Wisconsin Bar Association.  Other speakers at the occasion included Milwaukee mayor Cornelius Corcoran, Milwaukee Circuit Judge Edward T. Fairchild (himself later a member of the state supreme court), and former students George Burns L’14 and Joseph Witmer L’24.  Speaking on behalf of the students of the Milwaukee Law Class which had preceded the Milwaukee/Marquette Law School was Milwaukee lawyer A.K. Stebbins L’08 (hon.).

The current law students used the occasion to announce the presentation of a set of Canadian Reports to the school’s library.

Medals containing an image of former Marquette president Joseph Grimmelsman on one side and an engraving of the new law building on the other were distributed to guests and students.  Several of these medals are now in the possession of the Marquette University archives.

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