From President Robert Wild, S.J.

We recently celebrated yet another watershed moment for our university when philanthropist and alumnus Joseph Zilber marked his 90th birthday by committing $30 million to support Marquette University Law School. He asked that

$5 million be directed to the proposed new facility for our law programs and $25 million be used for scholarships for law students. This is in addition to the already established Zilber Scholars program that has provided financial aid for hundreds of our students since 1984. A gift of this magnitude is cause enough for great fanfare but it held more significance because it was wrapped into a larger initiative Mr. Zilber calls the “New Potential for Milwaukee” that will invest a total of $50 million in charities, organizations and institutions that are deemed critical to Milwaukee’s future.

I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of Marquette’s role in this our home community and I couldn’t be more pleased with Mr. Zilber’s investment in the young men and women who will be tomorrow’s legal, political and business leaders. A Jesuit law school has a special responsibility to enroll students from all segments of society and produce graduates who will serve all who need assistance.

Study after study emphasizes the importance of higher education in creating opportunity, in spurring economic development, in addressing social issues, in helping to make a positive difference in our world. Marquette Law School and Marquette University as a whole are committed to being a part of the solution.
Accordingly, Marquette’s Law School is working aggressively to position the Law School as a national leader in legal education. A centerpiece of that strategy is the construction of a signature building that will be better able to support the array of academic programs now offered, a facility that will attract outstanding faculty and students, a place that will serve as a great venue not only for lectures and conferences on various knotty legal issues but also for the wider civic community to gather and discuss public policy issues important for our times. People are partnering with us in our quest, including Ray and Kay Eckstein, who announced in May their intention to donate $51 million for the new building. Other gifts have also arrived, and so we are well on our way.

But why a new Law School building? Anyone familiar with our present facility knows it is cramped and increasingly less well suited to the task of providing a top-flight legal education. To give you some specifics, in the past 20 years the law faculty has doubled in size, the law library collection has grown by more than two and one-half times, and our student body has increased 50 percent. Large portions of our current building do not permit handicap access and there is no room for many of the amenities that present-day faculty members and students expect.

I would add that even before we put the first shovel in the ground for the new building, a public policy forum is already beginning to take shape under the auspices of the Law School at which members of the legal community, political leaders and concerned citizens statewide periodically are gathering to discuss and debate not only the most important legal issues of our time but broader issues of public policy as well. To me this represents one more way in which Marquette can put its not inconsiderable academic and institutional resources at the service of the larger human community.

But while the Law School is enlarging its mission and its resources, its governing values remain the same. That is, our law students are immersed in a demanding legal education that not only is helping them build a solid foundation in law and procedure but also in personal and professional ethics and values, one that will instill in them a passion for using the not insubstantial skills of a lawyer in the service of others, including, not least, the powerless and the disenfranchised. In other words, a legal education in the

Jesuit tradition of which everyone associated with Marquette can be proud.