A New Approach to Interpreting the Wisconsin Constitution?
In the most recent edition of the Yale Law Journal, Professor Abbe Gluck observes a phenomenon unique to state supreme courts: precedents that bind courts’ interpretive methods. At the U.S. Supreme Court, justices constantly argue about the proper method for interpreting contractual, regulatory, statutory, and constitutional texts. Prof. Gluck observes that in some state courts, including Wisconsin, a single case definitely sets the method by which future judges will interpret legal texts.
The Wisconsin case she refers to is, of course, State ex rel. Kalal v. Dane County Circuit Court (2004), which set a method by which the court would interpret statutes. That method focuses first on the text of the statute, and circumscribes the use of legislative history and other secondary sources.
Another Wisconsin case Prof. Gluck could mention is Buse v. Smith (1976), decided nearly thirty years before Kalal.