Public – Page 276 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Wisconsin’s State Motto: Forward or Backward? The Potential Demise of Open Records Law

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:July 9, 2015
Post category:Political Processes & Rhetoric Public Wisconsin Law & Legal System

In 1851, the state of Wisconsin adopted the simple word Forward as its state motto. It’s a powerful word that has symbolized the State’s progressive history. Lately, though, it seems like we’ve been going backward rather than forward. Case in point: open records law.

Wisconsin’s open records law has been around since 1981. Embodied in sections 19.31-19.39 of the Wisconsin Statutes, the law begins with a broad declaration of policy: “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those officers and employees who represent them.” Wis. Stat. § 19.31. The law “shall be construed in every instance with a presumption of complete public access, consistent with the conduct of governmental business. The denial of public access generally is contrary to the public interest, and only in an exceptional case may access be denied.” Id.

Open records law is consistent with transparency in government. Brett Healy, president of the conservative think-tank MacIver Institute, said, “Transparency in government is not a liberal or conservative issue, it is a good government issue. Taxpayers deserve access to government records, so they can keep politicians all across this great state honest and accountable.”

And the law has been used to do just that.

The Initial Appeal of Chief Justice John Roberts’ Dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges

Post author:Lisa A. Mazzie
Post published:July 8, 2015
Post category:Civil Rights Constitutional Interpretation Constitutional Law Human Rights Judges & Judicial Process Legal History Political Processes & Rhetoric Public

Rainbows abounded on the morning of Friday, June 26, 2015, when the United States Supreme Court held 5-4 that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry and a right to have their legal marriages recognized in every state.

The Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was not unexpected. The divide in the Court, too, was not unexpected: Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for himself, Justice Stephen Breyer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

(An interesting side note: Justice Kennedy, a 1988 Reagan nominee, has authored all four of the major SCOTUS cases on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights: Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and now Obergefall v. Hodges. As well, three of those cases were handed down on June 26—Lawrence on 6/26/03; Windsor on 6/26/13; Obergefell on 6/26/15).

When I first read the Obergefell decision, I found myself skeptical. Make no mistake: I fully agree with and welcome the holding. However, I was concerned about the Court’s reasoning. My first thought, upon reading the opinion, was to wonder why the Court did not base its holding more on the Equal Protection Clause, like Judge Richard Posner did in his opinion in Baskin v. Bogan, 766 F.3d 648 (7th Cir. 2014). That seemed to me to be the easiest argument. There is simply no compelling justification for the State to distinguish between opposite-sex and same-sex couples when it comes to marriage.

So, when I got to Chief Justice John Roberts’ dissent, it initially made some sense to me, and I could envision its appeal to many others.

The Problem with Justice Thomas’s Dignity Argument

Post author:Anna High
Post published:July 2, 2015
Post category:Constitutional Law Judges & Judicial Process Public U.S. Supreme Court

Justice Thomas, in his fervent dissent to the Supreme Court’s decision to invalidate same-sex marriage bans, has some interesting things to say about the concept of dignity. His view of human dignity is that it is innate and therefore inalienable: “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them.”

The punchline, of course, is that the majority’s reasoning, which relies heavily on a Constitutional reading that sees dignity at the heart of liberty and the Due Process Clause, is flawed – gays and lesbians are not deprived of dignity (and therefore liberty) by their inability to marry, because “the government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.” Essentially, Justice Thomas says, as long as the state leaves me alone, my liberty and dignity are intact.

Justice Thomas’s invocation of slavery and internment to illustrate his qualms about the dignity argument arguably undermines the moral force of his point. Moreover, it rests on a narrow and theoretical concept of dignity.