Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

The Legacy of the Little Rock Crucible

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:February 11, 2010
Post category:Education & Law Race & Law Speakers at Marquette

“That crucible moment” – that’s a phrase Ernest Green used to describe the period when he and eight other African American students enrolled in and attended Little Rock Center High School in 1957. It took the president of the United States and 10,000 soldiers to help them get in the door in deeply segregationist Arkansas. But more than anything, their success took the determination and self-control that the nine showed against almost overwhelming opposition and hate. The events of that fall became a huge landmark in the fight to end official segregation.

I didn’t expect to be as moved as I was when six of the nine took the stage at the Varsity Theater this week to receive Marquette’s highest honor, the Pere Marquette Discovery Award, from Father Robert Wild, S.J., the university’s president.

Maybe it was because I was just barely old enough at the time – I was seven – to have the television images from Little Rock permanently planted in my mind. And here they were, in person.

Desparate Times and Desperate Measures: Public Employment in San Francisco

Post author:Paul M. Secunda
Post published:February 10, 2010
Post category:Labor & Employment Law

The recession might not be as bad as it was, but tell that to all those people out there who can’t find jobs or are facing this type of government action (in the most progressive of all cities). From Heather Knight of the San Francisco Chronicle:

More than 10,000 San Francisco city workers — from librarians and gardeners to secretaries and street cleaners — would be laid off and most rehired for jobs with shorter hours under a controversial plan being examined by Mayor Gavin Newsom.

The idea, which sprouted in the mayor’s budget office and was described to his department heads Monday, would reduce the workweek for a large swath of the city’s 26,000 full-time employees from 40 hours to 37.5.

“Law Lords” to JFS: You’re Not So Free

Post author:Richard M. Esenberg
Post published:February 7, 2010
Post category:Religion & Law

JFS There has been a fair amount of commentary regarding a decision of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (formerly the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary and part of the House of Lords) in a matter called R (on application of E) v. Governing Board of JFS.

The case involved the desire of a man referred to only as E to have his son, M, admitted to London’s prestigious Jewish Free School. There are many more applicants than spaces in the school and it gives preference to children who are recognized as Jewish either by the rule of matrilineal descent derived from Deuteronmomy 7:3-4 (“… neither shall his daughter take on to thy son/For they shall turn thy son away from following me”) or by an Orthodox conversion (i.e., one recognized by the Office of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth).

E is Jewish but M’s mother is a former Roman Catholic whose conversion was supervised by a Reform rabbi, so was not recognized by the OCR.

M was denied admission and E sued, arguing that the preference violated the Racial Relations Act of 1976 which forbids discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. Is that what happened?