Accurate & Balanced Reporting on the Wisconsin Supreme Court

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has received a fair bit of coverage from the news and editorial desks of the state’s media outlets over the past five years. Sometimes the editorial writers have criticized particular decisions in cases, sometimes particular campaign statements, and sometimes the overall structure of the court. This morning’s news story by the Madison Capital Times is the latest to decry the course of the court:

[W]hat’s certain is that the political divisions in the court, once kept behind closed doors, are now on public display. Until recently, one could hardly imagine a public meeting where one justice would accuse the chief justice of posing for ‘holy pictures,’ then addressing her as ‘kiddo,’ while another rudely dismisses a colleague’s argument as ‘ridiculous.’ ‘It’s a shame because they’re just acting like schoolchildren,’ former Justice William Bablitch says.

It’s a shame that people have such short memories, and that the Capital Times story was written in an utterly one-sided way. 

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President Obama Nominates Marquette Lawyer to Fourth Circuit

Wynn-PhotographYesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on President Obama’s nomination of a Marquette lawyer—the Hon. James A. Wynn, Jr., L’79—to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Judge Wynn is a longtime member of the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and he has retained strong ties to Marquette Law School. In particular, he was our Hallows Judicial Fellow in 2002, delivering our Hallows Lecture (logically enough); received the All-University Alumni Merit Award in 2004; and spoke at the Law School’s commencement ceremony in 2007. I admire Judge Wynn very much, as I wrote in this letter earlier this week to Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate committee. I had not expected that Sen. Leahy would quote from the letter in a statement associated with the hearing, although he elected to do so in the course of giving his own take on the pace of federal judicial nominations, past and present. In all events, on behalf of all his many friends in the Marquette community, I wish Judge Wynn much good fortune in the nomination process.

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Seventh Circuit Demands “Intellectual Discipline” at Sentencing

seventh circuitIt’s almost like Judge Easterbrook read my article.  I have a forthcoming piece in the Marquette Law Review arguing that appellate courts ought generally to demand more rigor of trial judges in explaining their sentences and specifically to require greater attention to objective benchmarks.  Not surprisingly, I was quite pleased to read the Seventh Circuit’s opinion earlier this week in United States v. Kirkpatrick (No. 09-2382) (Easterbrook, J.), in which the court called for “intellectual discipline” at sentencing and vacated a sentence because the district judge failed to use the sentencing guidelines as an initial benchmark.

Here’s what happened.  Following his arrest for unlawful gun possession, Kirkpatrick confessed to four murders and then told his cellmate that he had arranged a contract hit on a federal agent.  After more than 200 hundred hours of investigation, law enforcement officials determined that all of these claims were false.  (Why Kirkpatrick would confess to four murders he did not actually commit is a mystery to me.)  With a conviction only for the gun-possession crime, Kirkpatrick’s guidelines range was calculated to be 37-46 months.  The district judge, however, felt he deserved more because of the false statements and the wasted law enforcement effort they caused.  So the sentence actually imposed was 108 months — more than twice the guidelines maximum. 

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