Wisconsin Supreme Court – Page 19 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Who Cares If No One Cares About the Wisconsin Supreme Court?

Post author:Daniel Suhr
Post published:August 25, 2010
Post category:Wisconsin Supreme Court

On the website of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), former Journal Sentinel columnist Mike Nichols asks: “Does anyone still care about the [Wisconsin] Supreme Court?”

He believes the answer is not really, and his evidence for this position is that the number of petitions for review of Court of Appeals decisions has dropped by about thirty percent since 2000. He acknowledges that several explanations for this drop are possible, but says the “precipitous” drop in the last several years “lends credence to the possibility, as former Justice William Bablitch hypothesized in an interview with me earlier this year, ‘that the acrimony on the court’” is to blame. According to Nichols, “This was not the attitude ten years ago.”

Actually, as Justice Bablitch ought to know, the acrimony on the court was just this bad (and just as public) ten years ago.

How Toxic is Thomas?

Post author:Richard M. Esenberg
Post published:July 15, 2010
Post category:Constitutional Interpretation Eastern District of Wisconsin Wisconsin Civil Litigation Wisconsin Supreme Court

Pat McIlheran has an interesting find in today’s Journal Sentinel, commenting on Judge Randa’s underreported decision in Gibson v. American Cyanamid. Judge Randa held that application of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Thomas decision (which applied something called risk contribution theory to hold lead paint pigment manufacturers collectively responsible for all harm from that product) would violate the federal due process rights of a defendant who had not itself manufactured lead paint pigment, but had assumed the liabilities of a manufacturer who had.

I spoke briefly with Pat yesterday on the potential fallout from the case and he quoted part of what I said. (The tyranny of 800 words is best understood by those who must submit to it.)

Here’s a more expanded version.

Best of the Blogs

Post author:Richard M. Esenberg
Post published:July 10, 2010
Post category:Constitutional Interpretation Legal History Religion & Law Wisconsin Supreme Court

What do we have this week? Over at the wonderful Mirror of Justice, you can follow a debate involving Michael Perry, Mike Scaperlanda, Robbie George, Robert Hockett and Rick Garnett and others (I’ve linked to some but not all of the posts in the thread) on Pope Benedict XVI’s concern about the “dictatorship of relativism.” Professor Hockett’s argument that terms like “relativism” and “tolerance” often mask conclusions rather than do much argumentative work reminded me of Steven D. Smith’s excellent new book, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse. I just finished reading it and hope to blog on it shortly.

At Public Discourse, Rob Vischer considers the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez upholding a requirement at Hastings Law School that recognized student organizations may not exclude students based upon their refusal to accept the organization’s objectives or beliefs. Rob concludes:

The next challenge is clear: we must think seriously about how to help deepen our public discourse about discrimination and diversity to include recognition that associational diversity is a key component of religious and moral liberty, and that even if a university now has the right to make all groups accept everyone, it is a right best left unexercised.

At Ballkinization, Jack Balkin expresses concern over a decision Thursday by a district judge in Massachusetts v. HHS finding that the Defense of Marriage Act violates the Tenth Amendment.