Marquette Law News

Who are the top business execs in southeastern Wisconsin when it comes to getting things done? Find out who made the list as one of the Milwaukee Business Journal's 2023 top 25 power brokers.

The Wisconsin State Journal recently wrote that a vote to replace retiring state Sen. Alberta Darling is set for April 4, the same election “that will determine whether conservatives or liberals hold a crucial majority on the state’s high court.” The state Democratic Party just sent out a fundraising email in which it said “the hugely consequential Wisconsin Supreme Court election is coming up in April.” And the nonprofit news outlet Wisconsin Watch has reported that “Democrats are eyeing the April 4 Wisconsin Supreme Court election as an opportunity to win a majority.”

“It is conceivable that you could have two conservatives prevail in the primary or you could have two progressives prevail,” says Ed Fallone, a Marquette law professor who has run for the court twice, in 2013 and 2020. He thinks the former scenario is more likely; Republicans tend to show up for primaries in greater numbers than Democrats. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is gaining ground in a new poll of possible presidential contenders for 2024. The Marquette Law School conducts national surveys every couple of months. The newest survey, held after the midterms, shows DeSantis pulling into a tie with President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup. “I think the big takeaway is on the Republican primary side, looking ahead to 2024, is that Ron DeSantis has continued to improve his standing with Republican voters,” said poll director Charles Franklin.

An Oak Creek man accused of stabbing his in-laws in Illinois had been sentenced to jail the day before in Wisconsin. However, a Waukesha Judge running for State Supreme Court allowed him two days to report, the I-Team discovered. Michael Liu, 36, was supposed to report to jail by Dec. 2 to serve four months for a domestic violence incident over the summer. Judge Jennifer Dorow sentenced Liu on Nov. 30 and allowed Liu two days to report.

"I don't think it reflects negatively on her character," Janine Geske, retired State Supreme Court Justice and current professor at Marquette University's Law School said. "These are decisions tough judges have to make." Geske served as a judge for the Milwaukee Circuit Court for 12 years. She says, these kinds of decisions, like deciding if a guilty defendant should be given time before reporting for jail, are weighed heavily by judges daily.  "If it's a felony, even if they've been out on bail, you're sentencing them to prison," Geske said. "Ordinarily, most judges will take them into custody immediately because the shock of suddenly getting prison time creates a bigger risk that they may abscond and take off and not show up. Misdemeanors are a little harder, which is what domestic violence is. It's a balancing between, is there something that might happen, that they may not appear? Or worse yet, go out and commit some crimes?"

Between 1977 and today, things have gotten exponentially more expensive: groceries, cars, housing prices, a cup of coffee in the morning—basically everything, it seems, except the cost of seeing the Columbus Clippers, a Triple-A baseball team, play in person. When the modern incarnation of the Clippers formed in Columbus, Ohio, a ticket was $5. Today, it is $8. 

The Clippers are a storied minor-league franchise, an affiliate first of the Yankees (1979-2006) and now the Cleveland Guardians (2009-present) that once had Derek Jeter on its roster. But the Columbus Clippers owe their relative affordability to their unique governing structure: They are publicly owned. Franklin County, in which Columbus is its most populous city, runs the team, making it one of the only franchises in the country where maximizing profit is secondary to ensuring community access and participation.

This is not something that fans of the Clippers need to worry about. “When the community owns a team, it tends to stay in the community,” said Edward A. Fallone, a professor at Marquette University Law School who wrote a paper on fan ownership, “as opposed to the never-ending merry-go-round of teams leaving for larger media markets or getting purchased and moved by a new owner.”