Collecting Judges, Past and Present

Tom Shriner’s recent remembrance of Judge Dale Ihlenfeldt said to law students and new lawyers that “you can—must—learn the lessons of the law (and life) from everyone, not just your professors, but your colleagues, your adversaries, your clients, and even from judges.” This last (neatly phrased) is the case, in my estimation, both of judges whom one knows and of others whom one has never met. One should collect judges, as Tom and I say to the students in our courses.

Two whom I have collected in my time in Wisconsin are Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson and Seventh Circuit Judge Diane S. Sykes, L’84. While I have previously alluded to their friendly competition with one another on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, as it seemed to me, I do not seek to remember them here: They are very much with us. Rather, each herself had occasion in the U.S. Courthouse in Milwaukee, in the past year or two, to remember a late predecessor and friend: Judge Myron Gordon (pictured here, courtesy E.D. Wis.) in Chief Justice Abrahamson’s case, and Judge Terence T. Evans, L’67, in Judge Sykes’s. With permission, I wish to share these remembrances here.

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Cockfighting, Congress, and Interstate Commerce

Some convicted defendants in South Carolina are crying foul at the application of the federal Animal Welfare Act to criminally punish the promotion of cockfighting. The statute is said to be based in the power of Congress, found in article I, section 8 of the Constitution, to “regulate commerce . . . among the several States . . . .” Federal prosecutors successfully applied the statute at the trial level, and now the case is before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

The defendants (now appellants) argue that their conduct is not sufficiently related to interstate commerce, and is too local in character, to justify Congress’ exercise of its interstate commerce authority. Their contention in this regard is not about whether the promotion of cockfighting may be banned, but rather whether such conduct may be banned by Congress, which can only enact statutes that further its constitutionally enumerated powers. (Such conduct is largely prohibited, albeit with a lesser criminal sanction, by South Carolina law.)  Their contention, moreover, appears not to be that the Animal Welfare Act as a whole is unconstitutional, but only that its application to their particular conduct exceeds Congress’s interstate commerce power.

The appellants’ arguments have a familiar ring to them.

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The Roots of Progressivism Lie in . . . the Republican Party?

Tonight, when President Barack Obama delivers his third State of the Union address, he is widely expected to channel the progressive rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt. It was Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 (quoted in my previous post here) that called for the federal government to play an active role in regulating the economy. When he speaks to the nation tonight, President Obama is likely to push back against the demand to shrink the federal government – a common refrain among the current crop of Republican presidential candidates — by pointing to Theodore Roosevelt’s call for an active federal government.

It is certainly true that, in his “New Nationalism” speech, Theodore Roosevelt developed the theme that elite special interests had come to dominate government at all levels, thereby turning government into a tool for their own narrow purposes. President Obama is hoping that a return to this theme will resonate with voters today. However, while the connection between President Obama and Theodore Roosevelt has been widely reported, few commentators have recognized that these same ideas actually can be traced back to an earlier Republican president . . . Abraham Lincoln.

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