The Constitutionality of the Open Meetings Law

During oral argument this past Monday in Ozanne v. Fitzgerald, the Wisconsin Supreme Court was asked to rule that the Open Meetings Law violates the Wisconsin Constitution to the extent that the law grants authority to the Wisconsin circuit courts to void legislative enactments passed in violation of its provisions.

This is not a novel argument.  Over the years, opponents of state “sunshine laws” have filed legal challenges to public records and open meetings laws around the country.  Sometimes, these challenges have been based on First Amendment claims.  At other times, they have attempted to argue that the judicial enforcement of sunshine laws violates the doctrine of separation of powers.

In 1992, the Supreme Court of Florida considered and rejected this exact argument. 

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Connections

The inside cover of America magazine always has a column entitled “Of Many Things.”  A recent piece by Edward Schmidt, S.J., focused on the importance of connections. “Connections great and small help us find balance and identity”, he wrote. Is that what I was seeking as we drove southeast from St. Paul headed to Milwaukee for my reunion?

Reunions of lawyers are like other reunions in that they connect or reconnect those that life has flung to places, close and far, from where the original connection took place. But lawyers are sui generis, and I use that term thinking of Justice Hugo Black who, I am told, did not use Latin in his opinions. Our uniqueness comes from our training and what we do. Over the years I have used examples of my “job” such as this past weekend’s match between Nadal and Federer. For every stroke of one, the other quickly and frequently with devastating accuracy counters with a stroke intended to thwart or defeat the other. Not unlike a wide receiver trying to run a post pattern or Dirk trying to stop our beloved D Wade, the lawyer is constantly countered by defenses offered by another lawyer. Unlike athletes, we seldom have throngs cheering our moves. Frequently the cause we advocate is unpopular

What we have done over the years has formed what we have become.  

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Correction: Make That Milwaukee Montessori

I made a sloppy error in the section of the blog item posted Monday rounding up some recent education news. I named Downtown Montessori as a voucher school where many parents opted to have their children not take Wisconsin’s standardized exams. I meant to say Milwaukee Montessori, a private school on the west side that takes part in the voucher program. Downtown Montessori, on the south side, is an independent charter school where all the students take part in the state exams, Virginia Flynn, the head of school, said. My apologies. The blog item should have read like this:

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