Judges & Judicial Process – Page 33 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

The Court of Appeals Speaks in the Recall Case

Post author:Edward A. Fallone
Post published:February 3, 2012
Post category:Civil Procedure Election Law Judges & Judicial Process Public Wisconsin Law & Legal System

Today, the District IV Court of Appeals issued an opinion that reverses a ruling by the Waukesha County Circuit Court denying a motion to intervene in the case of Friends of Scott Walker v. Brennan. The practical impact of today’s Court of Appeals decision is that the committees seeking the recall of Governor Walker and other Republican officeholders will be permitted to intervene in the case of Friends of Scott Walker v. Brennan. As a result, all of the legal rulings made by Judge Davis subsequent to his denial of the motion to intervene must be vacated, so that these legal issues can be reargued with the participation of the recall committees.

This means that Judge Davis’ earlier ruling, interpreting the statutory procedures for recalls under Section 9.10, is now vacated. On January 5, 2012, Judge Davis ordered the Government Accountability Board (GAB) to take affirmative steps to identify and strike any recall signatures that are fictitious, duplicative or unrecognizable. Because of this earlier ruling, the GAB went ahead and adopted new procedures, purchased new signature recognition software, and sought additional time in which to review the recall petitions.

Collecting Judges, Past and Present

Post author:Joseph D. Kearney
Post published:January 30, 2012
Post category:Eastern District of Wisconsin Judges & Judicial Process Public Seventh Circuit

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.

John Paul Stevens’ Restraint

Post author:Gabriel Houghton
Post published:January 16, 2012
Post category:Constitutional Interpretation Federalism Judges & Judicial Process Legal History Public U.S. Supreme Court

After he retired in 2010, John Paul Stevens published Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir. After a brief description of the first twelve Chief Justices of the United States Supreme Court, from John Jay through Harlan Fiske Stone, he describes in more detail the last five with whom he was professionally acquainted. Stevens clerked for Wiley Rutledge, after earning the highest GPA in the history of Northwestern Law School, during the 1947 – 48 Term when Fred Vinson was Chief Justice. Stevens was in private practice in Chicago, sometimes teaching antitrust law at the University of Chicago, when Earl Warren presided over the Court. It was during this time, however, that he argued his only case before the Court. In Five Chiefs, he notes that the most memorable aspect of his experience as an advocate before the Court was the sheer proximity of the Justices. Though the distance between the lawyer and the bench is over six feet, Stevens felt sure that “Chief Justice Warren could have shaken my hand had he wished.”

Details like this provide an inside glimpse of the Court. Early in his account, Stevens describes how the prohibition against playing basketball in the gym directly above the courtroom occurred during Vinson’s tenure: Byron White, one of Vinson’s first clerks and a former All-American, was practicing layups during oral argument. Stevens’ anecdotes are always respectful of their subjects and strike one as rather tame, at least until one realizes that civility, the ability to “disagree without being disagreeable,” is of the utmost importance to him.