{"id":10830,"date":"2010-07-08T16:46:45","date_gmt":"2010-07-08T21:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=10830"},"modified":"2010-07-08T16:46:45","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T21:46:45","slug":"gableman-complaint-is-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/07\/gableman-complaint-is-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Gableman Complaint is Dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Judicial Commission announced today that it is discontinuing prosecution <\/a>of its complaint against Justice Michael Gableman. Quite apart from the merits of the complaint, this seems like the right thing to do given the deadlock on the Court and the particular positions taken by the Abrahamson and Prosser groups. As I explained here<\/a> and here<\/a>, there seems to be no way that further proceedings could be expected to break the impasse.<\/p>\n

An interesting constitutional question was embedded within the writings of the Prosser and Abrahamson\u00a0 groups.<\/p>\n

\u00a0SCR 60.06(3) provides that a\u00a0candidate for judicial office “shall not knowingly or with reckless disregard for the statement’s truth or falsity misrepresent the identity, qualifications, present position, or other fact concerning the candidate or an opponent.”\u00a0 To avoid what it saw as potential First Amendment challenges, the Prosser group would limit its application to\u00a0 “objectively false statements”\u00a0by which they seem to mean statements that are literally false\u00a0without further consideration of their context or how\u00a0they would be understood by the listener.<\/p>\n

The Abrahamson group would have determined the message that the ad was\u00a0intended to and could be reasonably expected to convey and apply\u00a0the\u00a0rule’s test of truth and falsity and\u00a0scienter requirement to that message.<\/p>\n

Although not adopted by either\u00a0group of Justices,\u00a0one member of the three judge panel, Ralph Adam Fine,\u00a0construed the\u00a0rule\u00a0in the same way as the Abrahamson group,\u00a0i.e., to\u00a0prohibit messages that, even though composed of a series of literally true statements, convey a message that is false and that are made with knowledge of or in reckless disregard of its falsity.\u00a0But he would find that prohibition, at least as\u00a0applied to\u00a0core political speech, to be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0First Amendment mavens\u00a0among us will\u00a0appreciate that one of the issues in play here is the applicability of the New York\u00a0Times v. Sullivan line of cases to nondefamatory political speech. There are lower court cases going both ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Judicial Commission announced today that it is discontinuing prosecution of its complaint against Justice Michael Gableman. Quite apart from the merits of the complaint, this seems like the right thing to do given the deadlock on the Court and the particular positions taken by the Abrahamson and Prosser groups. As I explained here and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,67,44,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitutional-interpretation","category-first-amendment","category-political-processes-rhetoric","category-wisconsin-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}