I Started Law School . . .

booksThank you to Professor Slavin for asking me, back in my first month as a wide-eyed 1L, to be on the blog. I thank you for both your confidence in me and this opportunity to attempt to prove you correct.

I started law school at a disadvantage; I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I say this is a disadvantage because I met many people who not only wanted to be a lawyer but had known this about themselves since childhood. Some followed in the steps of a family member and some found their way by other means. That wasn’t me. I don’t want to dwell on myself for very long; I only introduce this to preface my assessment of the legal community in Milwaukee.

As a woman who knew nothing more about being a lawyer than the little that I had seen on television, I was surprised and pleased by what I have found through Marquette. I moved from one of the largest cities in the country with a huge, and quite imposing, legal community to Milwaukee—for reasons other than to go to Marquette University Law School. I allowed myself to be swayed by the sparse contact that I had with Marquette officials to move to a city that I had previously given little thought to, let alone visited.

I’m glad that I did.

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Mother and Daughter, Justly Proud

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Ellen Brostrom are wary of almost all of the labels that people try to put on them and on other justices and judges.

But one label they are proud of is mother and daughter, and that was clear Thursday during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at the Law School. The two are believed to be the only mother and daughter to serve on the bench at the same time in Wisconsin history, Gousha said.

“You’ve just been an incredible role model for me,” Judge Brostrom told her mother. Justice Roggensack said she never intentionally put her daughter on the path to being a judge, but she agreed she was very pleased when Bostrom narrowly won election in 2009.

When Gousha asked how the two of them react to labels such as “conservative” or “liberal” when it comes to describing judges, Justice Roggensack said, “I think it’s a lazy definition.” The use of labels reflects the high degree of partisanship of the times, especially when it comes to elections. She said labels are useful in negative campaigning, which is the way campaigns “can hit hardest fastest.”

Most cases that come before the state Supreme Court don’t fit on a liberal-conservative axis, she said.

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Respecting Student Experience

wallsOne of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was a copy of Jeannette Walls’ amazing memoir, The Glass Castle. In it, she describes growing up with her three siblings in a household characterized by chaos and poverty on the one hand, and love and a sense of wonderment on the other.

Jeannette and her siblings live in a series of cars, tents, or leaky-roofed houses without heat. They forage for food in farmers’ fields and trash cans, wear cast-off clothing, and bathe so infrequently as to attract the scorn of schoolmates. Their unstructured life and economic deprivation are partly a product of their father Rex’s alcoholism, and partly a result of their mother’s free-spiritedness, which often bordered on mental illness. The parents held jobs for periods of time, but usually quit or were fired because they did not like the infringement of a work schedule on their freedom or did not see eye-to-eye with their bosses on some point. Despite these physical hardships, the Walls family is full of love and mutual affection, and Jeannette’s account of her family is surprisingly gentle and forgiving.

As a Family Law teacher who addresses issues such as child maltreatment, parental rights and child protection, I am fascinated by first person accounts of family life, and Walls’ account is full of nuance and insight. There is one scene however, that haunts me as a teacher. 

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