{"id":3998,"date":"2009-02-28T22:32:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-01T03:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2009-02-28T22:34:28","modified_gmt":"2009-03-01T03:34:28","slug":"marquette-law-school-in-the-1960s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/02\/marquette-law-school-in-the-1960s\/","title":{"rendered":"Marquette Law School in the 1960s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was happy to be asked by Michael O’Hear to be the Alum Blogger for March. I hope to avoid “Beware the Ides of March,” but will be happy with “March Madness,” especially if Marquette does well in the Big East tournament and beyond.<\/p>\n

I graduated from the Law School in 1967, a tumultuous time for our society that did not exempt the Law School. I had a chance to look back at that period when Gordon Hylton asked me to participate in the Centennial Celebration at the Law School last semester<\/a>. That caused me to reflect some more on the role of Robert Boden as Dean of the Law School. On one hand, Bob Boden has come to be a generally revered figure by members of the Law School community — students, alumni, faculty and staff. On the other, I, and I think many of my classmates, have viewed him differently, quite negatively. Can these two views be squared?<\/p>\n

Why the negativity? Boden came in as Dean and was part of what appeared to be a campaign to sweep clean the School of what we would now call its progressive elements. Some of my class’s favorite professors, for example, Bob O’Connell, appeared to have been forced to leave. Further, Boden announced that no one in the Law School, including students, could participate in local civil rights activities — a boycott of the public schools — aimed at challenging school segregation. He deemed participation to be unprofessional. Finally, the new direction of the Law School appeared to be intended to drop the school beneath the radar of national legal education. Where at one time Archibald Cox, Justice Douglas, Father Robert Drinan, and even Governor George Wallace came to the Law School, little was heard of it for a good long time.<\/p>\n

My notion is that it took until the publication of the dreaded U.S. News<\/em> rankings to treat the local emphasis of the Law School as evidence that the School was near the bottom of all law schools, and that got the attention of the central university administration. It is one thing to be beneath the radar; it is quite another thing when the radar spots you out in a national ranking system. Beginning with Howard Eisenberg and continuing today under Joseph Kearney, the Law School has made tremendous progress on all fronts to be viewed as\u00a0an excellent law school. Moving into Eckstein Hall will complete the transformation. It is such good news that the Law School is back and no doubt better than ever.<\/p>\n

So why is Bob Boden revered?\u00a0 I have been given to understand that, looking back at some distance, he would have liked to have been able to revisit some of his decisions made early in his time as Dean. Further, I have come to learn that he was a very positive force in the lives of many students. Basically, he had quite the personal touch that helped many students academically, professionally, and personally. That deserves respect. And I see a fuller picture of his contributions to the Law School.<\/p>\n

In this new era of fierce competition among law schools, the qualities of caring that students learn, that they develop as competent professionals, and that they need to stay true to their basic human values seem sometimes at risk. I may be hopelessly old school, but I hope that excellent teaching and a focus on students never take second fiddle to any of the other activities, especially faculty scholarship, necessary for a law school to excel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was happy to be asked by Michael O’Hear to be the Alum Blogger for March. I hope to avoid “Beware the Ides of March,” but will be happy with “March Madness,” especially if Marquette does well in the Big East tournament and beyond. I graduated from the Law School in 1967, a tumultuous time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marquette-law-school","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}