Joseph R. Wall

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Joe Wall is known as a legal scholar and teacher, and he single-handedly raised the level of the practice of law during his time at the Milwaukee County Children’s Court Center.”

That’s how attorneys Anne Marie Abell and Cynthia Lepkowski praised Wall in nominating him as a Leader in the Law.

While justice may be the goal in the adult court system, that’s not always attainable in children’s court — the best that can be hoped for in some cases is to repair the damage that has been done.

The system has improved. In the 1980s, parental rights were, in practice, never terminated. Children stayed in the system until they aged out.

In the 1990s, the law changed, and so many termination of parental rights (TPR) petitions ensued that, when Wall was assigned to children’s court after election to the circuit court in 2001, he volunteered to set up a court to do nothing but TPRs.

It was a challenging task, applying new laws that increased the ability to terminate parental rights, without precedent from appellate courts interpreting those laws, while ensuring that parents’ constitutional rights were respected before the court imposed what Wall calls “the civil death penalty.”

Wall spent four years in children’s court, and two more in felony drug court — courts which, despite radically different procedures, Wall says are similar in that both are driven by the same underlying cause — “societal neglect of human infrastructure.”

“We’re not taking care of children at early ages; we’re not helping men and women, especially mothers, in crisis,” Wall says.

While on the bench, Wall also frequently wrote and spoke at community events about the consequences of society’s neglect of its children that he saw every day.

In 2007, Wall left the bench to return to where his legal career began, the U.S. Attorney’s office. His first case back was prosecuting corrupt Milwaukee Alderman Michael McGee, Jr. In addition to public corruption cases, Wall prosecutes pimps for trafficking underage girls under the federal human trafficking statute.

Wall also volunteers extensively in the community for the St. Benedict’s free meal program, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Benedict Center for Women, Adoption Resources of Wisconsin, and the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.