Wisconsin’s Chief Injustice

[Geee]

National Review:


Atop Wisconsin’s supreme court sits Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson. And an unhappy chief is she. Conservatives outnumber liberals on the court by four to three, forcing Abrahamson to dissent in 37 percent of the cases during the 2009–10 term. Meanwhile, the legal challenge to Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair” bill is rushing toward the court’s docket.

If only she had one more vote.

Luckily, Justice David Prosser, a conservative, faces reelection next Tuesday. His opponent is JoAnne Kloppenburg, Abrahamson’s former intern, who has become a Joan of Arc for the Left. Polling between the candidates is even, a bad sign for the incumbent. But behind Prosser’s travails lie not only enraged state-employee unions, but also a wily chief justice, who is “maneuvering to get the court back to a liberal majority,” a source tells National Review Online.
Three things are clear: First, Abrahamson, 77, is an accomplished jurist. In 1953, she graduated from New York University magna cum laude. She then followed her husband to Indiana University, where she earned a law degree in 1956. In 1962, she secured a doctorate of law at the University of Wisconsin. For the next 14 years, she worked for a law firm in Madison and taught at the law school until Gov. Patrick Lucey, a Democrat, appointed her to the supreme court in 1976. She’s been there ever since, winning reelection four times. As the longest-serving justice, she serves as chief, a role she assumed in 1996.

Second, she is a liberal jurist. Abrahamson proselytizes for the legal school of thought known as “new federalism,” which encourages state supreme courts to interpret their state constitutions independently of the Supreme Court — that is to say, more broadly. In Wisconsin v. Knapp, for instance, Abrahamson joined the majority, which rejected a bloody sweatshirt found in a suspected murderer’s home as impermissible evidence. Although the Supreme Court had held the Miranda stipulation — that an officer enumerate a suspect’s rights before his testimony becomes valid — did not apply to physical evidence, the court based the ruling on the Wisconsin constitution and presto! A new liberty was born.

[NCTexan]

Fighting and making law for the old, the sick, the helpless, the hopeless...

 

and protecting their God given rights.

 

... like "You have the right to arrive downtown!" (This was an "rail" advertisement on the site with Shirley's picture.)