By Ben Poston of the Journal Sentinel

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia offered frank advice Wednesday to the hundreds of faculty and students who turned out for the dedication of Ray and Kay Eckstein Hall, Marquette University Law School's new $85 million building.

He implored the faculty to focus more energy on instruction and less on getting research published in law journals.

"The reality is that the part of your academic career that will have the most lasting impact and that will be remembered after you are long gone is those hours you spent producing a living intellectual legacy in the classroom," Scalia said. "I hope Marquette will always be a teaching law school."

He urged students to take a broad range of courses to better prepare them for the practice of law after graduation. Scalia, who gave the keynote address, said he stuck mainly to core courses while at Harvard Law School.

"Even so, I could not take all the courses I wanted to, and I feel deeply the existence of some gaps in my education as a lawyer, gaps that I will never be able to fill," he said. "It is only in this place, in a law school, that you will be able to study an entire body of law, not haphazardly or episodically, but systematically."

Scalia, who once clerked at Foley & Lardner in Milwaukee between his second and third years at Harvard Law School, joked that Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson had named him an "honorary cheesehead."

Jokes aside, Scalia said he was honored to speak at the dedication of Eckstein Hall, the high-tech brick-and-glass building that overlooks the Marquette Interchange.

"I have great delight in the flourishing of this institution," he said. "I look forward to its growth and prosperity."

Abrahamson also gave remarks, and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York blessed the building.

Eckstein Hall was made possible by a $51 million gift from the Ecksteins, an alumni couple from Cassville. The late Joseph Zilber, a Milwaukee builder and philanthropist and a Marquette alumnus, donated $30 million to the law school in August 2007, of which $5 million went to the building.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/102499269.html

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