Law School’s Schoone Fellow Describes Wisconsin’s Legal History in “On the Issues” Program

Joseph A. Ranney says his interest in almost two centuries of Wisconsin’s legal system stands on two things. One is as simple as this: “I love history.” The other is the large amount of time he has spent reading old volumes of Wisconsin legal records as a student and as a lawyer.

His passion for the subject has made Ranney, the Adrian P. Schoone Fellow in Wisconsin Law and Legal Institutions at Marquette University Law School and a partner with the firm of DeWitt Ross & Stevens in Madison, an expert on Wisconsin’s legal history. His most recent book, Wisconsin and the Shaping of American Law, was published in 2017 by the University of Wisconsin Press.

During an “On the Issues with Mike Gousha” program in the Lubar Center in Eckstein Hall on Wednesday, Ranney talked about trends in Wisconsin’s legal history and some of the important and sometimes colorful episodes in that history, going back to the 1820s when Wisconsin was a territory and it was a challenge to get people to respect what judges did.

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Both Sides Now: The Interactive Constitution

Constitution & GavelI recently learned about an amazing feature on the National Constitution Center website: an interactive Constitution. The site contains the entire United States Constitution and all of its amendments.

Click on any part—the Preamble, any of the seven articles, or any of the 27 amendments—and view the text of that part, along with the dates of its signing or passage and its ratification. You’ll also learn if any part of the Constitution was changed by an amendment.  Article I contains several sections that were changed by later amendments. For example, click on the highlighted text in Article I, section 3 (“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote”) to learn that this section was changed by the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct popular election of senators.

The most interesting part, however, is that you’ll also get views from constitutional scholars “across the legal and philosophical spectrum.”

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Alexander Hamilton as Attorney

The extraordinary success of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” has spiked renewed interest in the accomplishments of the actual Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804). And indeed, Hamilton was a genuine military hero in the Revolutionary War, George Washington’s unofficial chief of staff, author of two-thirds of the “Federalist Papers,” the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, and the leading architect of the Early Republic’s market economy. His accomplishments as an attorney have attracted less attention, but legalists in particular might remember that in his era, he was New York City’s pre-eminent attorney.

When Hamilton returned to New York City after the defeat of the British in 1781, he qualified for a veteran’s exemption from the requirement that aspiring attorneys complete an apprenticeship. He studied law on his own for only six months, concentrating his studies on Lord William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the English Common Law.” He then passed an oral bar examination and was admitted to practice in 1782.

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