![\"\"](\"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/Carl-Barnett-Rix.jpg\" "\\"Carl")
Carl Barnett Rix was never a full-time professor at the Marquette Law School, but he was a part-time instructor for almost 40 years (1908-1946).\u00a0 During that time he taught hundreds of Marquette law students while carrying on an active law practice and a professional life that led him to the presidencies of the Milwaukee Bar Association, the Wisconsin State Bar, and the American Bar Association.<\/p>\n
A Wisconsin native, Rix was born in September 30, 1878.\u00a0 His father was from Quebec, Canada, while his mother hailed from Milwaukee.\u00a0 After finishing his public school education, he became a school teacher, and from 1895 to 1899, he taught in the public schools in Cedar Creek and West Bend, Wisconsin.\u00a0 However, in the fall of 1899, he relocated to Washington, D.C., where he enrolled in Georgetown University to study law.\u00a0 He received an LL.B. degree from Georgetown in 1903 and an LL.M. degree the following year.\u00a0 He then went to work for the United States Bureau of the Census, but in 1905, he returned to Wisconsin where he passed the bar examination.\u00a0 He then set up practice in Milwaukee as a member of a law firm eventually known as Rix, Kuelthau, and Kuelthau.\u00a0 (He would remain affiliated with that firm for the next 58 years.)<\/p>\n
Much of Rix\u2019 career was devoted to bar association activities.<\/p>\n
He served as president of the Milwaukee Bar Association in 1932 and 1933, and in the latter year, he was elected president of the Wisconsin State Bar (a position later held by current Marquette emeritus law professor James Ghiardi).<\/p>\n
In 1946, he was elected president of the American Bar Association.\u00a0 In addition to his service as ABA president, Rix was also a member of the ABA House of Delegates (1941-1945), the ABA Board of Governors (1938-1941), the ABA Committee on Peace and Law through the United Nations, and as Director of the ABA Endowment Fund (1941-1945).<\/p>\n
After his stint as ABA president, Rix became increasingly concerned that the United Nations might intrude upon United States sovereignty, and in 1952, he testified before a United States Senate committee on behalf of the Bricker Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment designed to protect what its supporters viewed as traditional American freedoms from being compromised by what Rix called \u201ctreaty laws.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 As a result of similar concerns, Rix had also, on behalf of the ABA, opposed the United Nations Convention on Genocide in the late 1940\u2019s.\u00a0 After stepping down as ABA president, he remained active for many years with the ABA, devoting particular attention to the organization\u2019s Library Services Committee.<\/p>\n
A Republican in politics, Rix served as the campaign adviser to Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York during his successful run in the 1940 Wisconsin primary.\u00a0 Although Dewey was defeated for the Republican nomination that year by Wendell Willkie, he was the G.O.P. standard-bearer in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections.<\/p>\n
Rix was a member of the original Marquette Law School faculty, and he began teaching at the school when it first opened in the fall of 1908.\u00a0 He was, among the original faculty, the only professor who had been educated at a Jesuit (or Roman Catholic) law school, and he was among the Roman Catholic minority on the early faculty.<\/p>\n
Although\u00a0Rix taught a variety of courses over the years, his primary teaching responsibilities were in the fields of Real Property and Future Interests.\u00a0 During his stint on the faculty he served under five deans\u2014James Jenkins (1908-1916), Max Schoetz (1916-1927); Clifton Williams (1927-1933); Acting Dean Rev. Hugh MacMahon (1933); and Francis Swietlik (1934-1946).\u00a0 In 1946, he stepped down from the faculty at age 67, upon his election as president of the ABA. \u00a0At the time of his retirement, he was the last remaining member of the original law faculty still teaching at the law school.\u00a0 (Of course, that would also have been true had he retired in 1929.)<\/p>\n
Rix never retired from the practice of law, and he died at his desk in his downtown Milwaukee law office on September 30, 1963.\u00a0 At the time of his death, he was 85 years old, and the only surviving member of the original Marquette Law School faculty.<\/p>\n