Two of Milwaukee’s former United States Attorneys have formed a new law practice. Steven Biskupic (shown above) and Michelle Jacobs (shown below), both former long-time federal prosecutors and more recently partners at one of Wisconsin’s top private firms, have opened Biskupic & Jacobs, S.C.

The new firm will concentrate on complex business disputes, government investigations, appellate work, and white collar criminal defense.

Combined, Biskupic and Jacobs have more than 40 years of legal experience. Both served as Assistant United States Attorneys for more than 10 years each. Biskupic then served as the United States Attorney from 2002 to 2009, and Jacobs succeeded him, serving from 2009-10.

Both have a wealth of experience on some of Wisconsin’s most high profile cases. Biskupic was the lead prosecutor on more than two dozen public corruption cases, securing convictions of four Milwaukee aldermen, the Kenosha County executive, and seven Milwaukee police officers involved in the beating of Frank Jude. More recently, while in private practice, Biskupic was involved in recall and removal-related matters involving high level public officials.  In one matter, he served as special prosecutor for the Sheboygan Common Council’s proceedings to remove its Mayor.

Jacobs has successfully argued more than 75 appellate cases, both civil and criminal, including the case against former Milwaukee alderman Michael McGee Jr. Jacobs has also tried a large number of civil and criminal cases, including regulatory, white collar, and business related matters.

Biskupic is a Marquette University Law School graduate. Jacobs is a University of Wisconsin Law School graduate.

In a December 27, 2012 article in The Wall Street Journal, Heather Haddon writes Ex-Prosecutors Use Links To Forge a Path to Politics (sub req.) and notes that when NAFUSA member Susan Brooks is sworn in as a member of Congress on January 3, 2013,

she will join a sizable group of Republican politicians that has emerged from a tightknit cadre of former U.S. attorneys appointed by President George W. Bush. Of the 145 U.S. attorneys that Mr. Bush installed, 21 have moved on to elected office or political appointments.

Haddon calls NAFUSA member Chris Christie “the standard bearer for the group”, and lists additional former Bush U.S. Attorneys in politics: Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming, Rep. Thomas Marino of central Pennsylvania, George Holding, who won a House seat in North Carolina and Drew Wrigley, lieutenant governor of North Carolina.

“They have really bonded,” NAFUSA Executive Director Rich Rossman is quoted as saying of the Bush II U.S. Attorneys.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would accept two cases challenging state and federal laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a woman.

One of the cases, from California, was filed in 2009 by NAFUSA member Theodore B. Olson, shown right, former solicitor general of the United States, and David Boies. After a lengthy trial, a federal district judge ruled in favor of the plaintifffs, holding that the Constitution required the state of California to allow same-sex couples to marry, despite an effort by California voters to override a decision by the state’s Supreme Court. A divided panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decision.

The second case involves an appeal from the Second Circuit which struck down the Defense of Marriage Act which defines marriage as between only a man and a woman for the purposes of federal laws and programs. In February 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department would no longer defend the statute in court. House Republicans intervened and retained Paul D. Clement, another former solicitor general to defend the law

As Adam Liptak, who spoke at NAFUSA’s New York conference in 2010, writes in this morning’s New York Times:

The court’s docket is now crowded with cases about the meaning of equality, with the new cases joining ones on affirmative action in higher education and on the future of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Decisions in all of the cases are expected by June.

NAFUSA member Bob Barr has teamed up with Mary McCarthy, a former high-ranking intelligence official, in an Op-Ed piece published by The Christian Science Monitor entitled How to protect Americans from anti-terrorism data sharing.

Barr and McCarthy describe fusion centers as “state and regionally based information-sharing hubs designed to pool the knowledge and expertise of state, local, and federal law enforcement, intelligence agencies, military officials, and private sector entities.” But they opine that the centers are not being run properly and pose “very real risks” to civil liberties. They propose remedies to fix the perceived problems.

The editorial relies heavily on the Recommendations for Fusion Centers: Preserving Privacy & Civil Liberties While Protecting Against Crime & Terrorism report released by The Constitution Project’s Liberty and Security Committee. Barr and McCarthy are members of the committee, as are NAFUSA members Asa Hutchinson and William Sessions.

Barr served as the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia 1986-1990, and as a member of Congress (R-Ga.).

Despite some criticism from within his party for his bear hugs for President Obama during Hurricane Sandy, NAFUSA member Chris Christie is receiving some recognition as a possible front runner for the GOP nomination for the White House in 2016. New Yorker writer John Cassidy, for instance, writes in his blog Can A Certain (Very Popular) Fat Guy From Jersey Win The White House?:

Then there is Hurricane Sandy, a tragic accident of geography and nature with which Christie will forever be associated. A month on, he is basking in record approval ratings: sixty-seven per cent, according to  one new poll; seventy-two per cent according to another; seventy-seven per cent,  according to a third. “Christie never looked more like ‘Jersey Guy’ than when he  stood on the seaside boardwalk after Sandy, and, just about unanimously, his New  Jersey neighbors—Republicans, Democrats, Independents—applauded,” said Maurice  Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The  Governor gets high marks from the cities, the shore, from every corner of the  state.” And not just in Jersey. More than his flirtation with a Presidential run  earlier this year, more than his speech at the Republican Convention in Tampa,  Christie’s vigorous response to the storm—and his vigorous embrace of President Obama—turned him into a national figure. In a situation crying out for  leadership, here was somebody who seemed willing to set aside partisan politics  and seek help anywhere he could find it, even if that meant putting his arms around a Democratic President who was due to face the voters a week later.

In the meantime, Christie has a relection campaign to face in New Jersey.