Mother and Daughter, Justly Proud

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Ellen Brostrom are wary of almost all of the labels that people try to put on them and on other justices and judges.

But one label they are proud of is mother and daughter, and that was clear Thursday during an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” session at the Law School. The two are believed to be the only mother and daughter to serve on the bench at the same time in Wisconsin history, Gousha said.

“You’ve just been an incredible role model for me,” Judge Brostrom told her mother. Justice Roggensack said she never intentionally put her daughter on the path to being a judge, but she agreed she was very pleased when Bostrom narrowly won election in 2009.

When Gousha asked how the two of them react to labels such as “conservative” or “liberal” when it comes to describing judges, Justice Roggensack said, “I think it’s a lazy definition.” The use of labels reflects the high degree of partisanship of the times, especially when it comes to elections. She said labels are useful in negative campaigning, which is the way campaigns “can hit hardest fastest.”

Most cases that come before the state Supreme Court don’t fit on a liberal-conservative axis, she said.

“Was the contract breached? Is that a liberal or conservative issue?” she asked. She said if people want to know who she is, they should read her opinions, which she aims to write in terms that are clear to a wide audience.

Judge Brostrom said, “I think the labels miss reality. People are complicated.” She said she considers her views to be liberal on some issues and conservative on others. She said she also sees her mother’s views as being more complex than the labels that are frequently used in pegging the high court’s seven justices. (Roggensack is generally labeled a conservative, for whatever that label is worth.)

Justice Roggensack said she does not regard the Supreme Court as divided on personal lines, but there are deep divisions among the justices about the role of the court. “We do like each other as people,” she said of the justices. “We are not always fond of the positions one another takes. “ She declined to discuss the matter specifically, but said the court will be issuing an opinion soon that will shed light on the differing philosophies.

Both said they favor electing judges and justices, even with the problems elections bring because of campaign tactics and controversies around campaign donations.

“I believe in democracy, I believe in people weighing in,” Judge Brostrom said.

Justice Roggensack said that if judicial choices were made by appointment, using recommendations from an expert committee, the selections would be limited frequently to people who were insiders in legal circles. “I wouldn’t have been on anyone’s long list, much less anyone’s short list,” she said. She was elected to the Supreme Court in 2003, after serving as a state appeals court judge.

Justice Roggensack said you can get excellent judges both by election and by appointment, and you can get mediocre judges through either process.

Both mother and daughter said that when they are shaping their rulings and decisions, they do not think about implications those actions might have on their re-election chances. Judge Brostrom said, “If I’m not going to do this job honestly, I don’t want the job.”

Asked by Gousha if it made a difference that women were in judicial positions now much more frequently and that four of the seven Supreme Court justices are women, Justice Roggensack said that differences on the high court do not fall along gender lines. But, she said, “I think women perhaps problem-solve a little differently than men do.”

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.