Marquette Law News

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.”

In Wisconsin and Michigan, incumbent Democratic governors overcame Republican challengers who were endorsed by Trump and repeated his denial of 2020’s outcome.

Sixty-three percent of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ voters but only 47% of Republican Tim Michels’ supporters said they backed their candidate enthusiastically. About as many Michels voters said they supported him with reservations. By contrast, in the race for U.S. Senate, 54% of voters for victorious Republican incumbent Ron Johnson were enthusiastic about him.

Michels was a weaker candidate — “he had some liabilities,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll in Wisconsin. And in the Senate race, though Johnson won reelection over Democrat Mandela Barnes, the margin was narrower than his 2016 or 2010 victories.

“I think there’s a strong case here that the Democratic advantage in turnout boosted the governor’s race a little over two points from where it was four years ago, and also in the process tightened the Senate race to just that one point margin for Johnson,” Franklin said.

Matthew Mitten, professor at Marquette University Law School and executive director of the National Sports Law Institute, nodded to the various government shutdowns of sporting events in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as analogues for disrupting sports sponsorship contracts, but acknowledged that any specific claim from FIFA or Budweiser would depend on the specific wording of their contract.

"You would expect to see some kind of force majeure clause, and one of the contingencies that is certainly foreseeable is that if there is any government regulation that changes, or any action by the government...would be certainly a circumstance outside either party's control," Mitten told Law360.

Judge Jennifer Dorow gained national attention for overseeing the Darrell Brooks trial. Now, she's considering a run for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That justices decide cases that impact Wisconsinite's daily lives, and will likely rule on whether the 1849 abortion ban is enforceable. "This spring’s supreme court race is shaping up to be highly consequential in the state of Wisconsin," said Ed Fallone, Marquette University Law School professor.

Nearly a year since his hiring was announced at New Mexico State, head football coach Jerry Kill still has not signed an employment contract with the university, the school confirmed this week.

As of Friday, he hadn’t even signed the university’s initial offer letter dated Nov. 21, 2021 – a two-page document that spells out the basic financial terms of his job but also states that he is on probation for a year like other new employees there.

It’s an unusual situation. Kill, 61, is still coaching at one of the most difficult jobs in major college football. He also is still getting paid at a rate of $550,000 annually, an athletics department official said. But without a signed contract – or even a signed initial offer letter – Kill’s situation delves into a precarious realm that carries significant risk for both sides and sometimes has created awkward situations and headlines that have raised the eyebrows of fans. Once, it became a federal case at Kentucky after men’s basketball coach Billy Gillispie went two years without signing his contact before being fired in 2009.

“This is a strange one,” said Martin Greenberg, an attorney and sports law professor at Marquette who has represented coaches in contract negotiations but is not involved in the Kill case.

Derek Mosley, a judge of the Milwaukee Municipal Court for 20 years, has been named the director of Marquette University Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, Marquette President Michael R. Lovell announced today. Mosley, who was appointed Municipal Court Judge in 2002 following a seven-year career as an assistant district attorney for Milwaukee County, will begin his new role on Jan. 9, 2023.