Single Sixteen-Year Terms Would Build Confidence in State Supreme Court, Task Force Members Say

The idea of the judiciary as independent guardians of the rule of law has taken a beating in Wisconsin in recent years, amid highly contentious state Supreme Court races and the widely publicized divisions within the state Supreme Court.

What plan with a realistic chance of being enacted could help restore respect for the judicial branch of state government as separate from politics?

That premise and that question shaped the work of a four-member task force of the State Bar of Wisconsin, and what the task force recommended recently is a plan that would be unique in the nation: Election of state Supreme Court justices to 16-year terms, without any opportunity to run for reelection.

The four members of the task force described how they settled on that proposal in a recent “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program at Eckstein Hall.

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Boden Lecture: Gerken Warns About “Shadow Parties” Dominating Politics

Heather Gerken views the political party faithful in the Republican and Democratic parties as “the most glorious creatures in American politics.”

But Gerken, the J. Skelly Wright Professor at Yale Law School, told several hundred people in the Appellate Courtroom in Eckstein Hall on Monday that she is concerned that the party faithful are being left out as political power moves increasingly into “shadow parties” of powerful people in political elites. She feared the result would be a decrease in the force on parties to “do right” by voters.

Gerken, whose views on how politics works in America have received wide attention from both scholars and policymakers, gave the annual Boden Lecture at Marquette University Law School.

In a second session at the Law School, she addressed a separate provocative topic: how innovation in American policy has been undertaken increasingly at the state and local levels in recent years, rather than at the national level. She discussed “How ‘Local’ Should Politics Be?” along with Charles Franklin, professor of law and public policy at the Law School, and Craig Gilbert, Washington bureau chief of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as part of the “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” series.

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Margaret Thatcher and Women in Government

“I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.”

— Margaret Thatcher

One of the world’s most powerful women died today.  Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s only woman prime minister, was 87.

Thatcher, leader of the country’s Conservative Party, was British prime minister from 1979 to 1990.  According to CNN.com, she shared “a close working relationship” with former President Ronald Reagan, “with whom she shared similar conservative views.” Initially dubbed “Iron Lady” by Soviet journalists, she was well known (for better or for worse) for her personal and professional toughness. (For interesting commentary on Thatcher and her impact, see here, here, and here.)                                               

Thatcher was a trailblazer, one of just a very few women to become heads of their country’s government. While women make up nearly half of the world’s population, worldwide, they represent roughly 16% of the members of national governing bodies.  In the United States, women account for only 18.1% of Congress, 33% of the United States Supreme Court, and no woman has ever been elected president.

So, what’s the problem? Some would argue that there’s nothing stopping women from running for office, even for president. True, there are no laws that outright prohibit women’s participation in government.  (Saudia Arabia, long the hold out on allowing women to vote and to serve in government, has finally reversed course.)  But there are other barriers that may be less obvious.

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