Marquette University Law School - History

History

Marquette University Law School was born out of Marquette University's 1908 acquisition of the Milwaukee Law Class and the Milwaukee University Law School. First known as the Marquette University College of Law, the school added a day division to the two predecessors' evening programs. The first dean was James Graham Jenkins, a retired judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. In 1916, the first edition of the Marquette Law Review was published, and in 1923, the college's name was changed to Marquette University Law School. A year later, the school moved into Sensenbrenner Hall. A law review article at the time described the building's interior: "four large lecture rooms and a large Moot Court room" and a "third floor be occupied entirely by the library capable of holding 50,000 volumes." The law school became a member of the Association of American Law Schools in 1912 and received American Bar Association approval in 1925. The evening program was suspended in 1924 as part of the accreditation process, and was not restored for decades.

It was under Dean Robert Boden that the modern law school emerged. He took over as acting dean in June 1965, and served as dean until his death in 1984. During those nearly 20 years, the size of the full-time faculty tripled, the student body nearly doubled, and the law library doubled the size of its collection. Boden also oversaw a significant increase in the physical plant of the law school, making two major additions to Sensenbrenner Hall. Moreover, in January 1968, the law library moved into the newly constructed Legal Research Center, appended to the west side of Sensenbrenner Hall. The move was managed by Professor Mary Alice Hohmann, the first woman to teach a law course at MULS.

In fall 2010, the school moved into the new Eckstein Hall. The school also recently received the two largest gifts in its history: $51 million from alumni Ray and Kay Eckstein for Eckstein Hall, and $30 million from real estate developer Joseph Zilber, the bulk of which will endow scholarships. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia spoke at the September 8, 2010 dedication ceremony.