Many thanks to our featured September bloggers: Professor Lisa Mazzie, student Theresa Fallon, and alum Tim Casey. The featured bloggers in October wll be Professor Rebecca Blemberg, student Joshua Pollack, and alum Chris Donovan ’05.
Yesterday was another full day for the Chilean students visiting from Hurtado University Law School. In the morning, alumn Reyna Morales gave a talk in Spanish on criminal procedure and law. Afterwards, MULS Professors Tom Hammer, Michael O’Hear, Chad Oldfather, Dan Blinka, and Greg O’Meara, S.J., participated in a Q&A panel. The Chilean students came prepared with a range of questions dealing with the types of legal defenses available to defendants, the rights of juveniles, and issues of due process in Guantanamo, among other topics.
In the afternoon, we drove to Madison to visit Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson at the State Capitol, accompanied by former Supreme Court Justice and MULS professor Janine Geske. The Chief Justice greeted the delegation in the hallways of the Capitol, and then invited the members to sit in the Supreme Court Hearing Room to offer an overview of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s work. With warm humor, the Chief Justice then answered the many questions that the Chilean students posed.
One student asked if the justices are ever influenced by their political affiliations when they write their decisions. The Chief explained that they do not work as Democrats or Republicans, but rather as “reasonable” people. That said, the students were curious about the election process and how judges are selected. The Chief Justice noted that she has sat on the bench for more than 30 years and joked that she plans on running in 2019, but unopposed. She clarified that, unlike other political campaigners, the judicial candidates only promise to uphold the law. She then turned to point to the mural above the bench of the founding fathers signing our national Constitution. The image is there to remind us that the justices take an “oath of office” to uphold the highest law. The Chief escorted the group to the conference room, where she shared the process for selecting who would write the majority opinion: chess pieces!
The Wisconsin Law Journal covered the event, so stay tuned for pictures.
Last week, we were privileged to hear Professor Michael Klarman speak on “Why Brown v. Board of Education Was a Hard Case.” This was one of the most enjoyable and interesting talks I have heard in a long time. I highly recommend it, and you can click here to get the webcast. My guess is that this would still be as funny and insightful on the audio. There were two particular points that he made in reviewing the history of the case that linked to conflict resolution theory that I want to highlight here.
First, Klarman noted that, contrary to typical practice, the justices facing the Brown decision did not take a straw poll at their first conference discussing the case. In fact, as he notes, by his count, there would have been only four votes to overturn Plessy at the beginning and nothing near the unanimity that the Court presented in its decision the following year. What was the import of not taking this poll? As Klarman notes, this allowed the justices to change their mind and to preserve fluidity in their thinking. In other words, the justices did not lock themselves into an opening position that then they would feel necessary to defend throughout the discussions.
The impact of publicly locking yourself in to an opening position is problematic, as we know.