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Chief justice calls for resistance to ‘tough talk’ challenging judiciary’s legitimacy

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//March 7, 2017//

Chief justice calls for resistance to ‘tough talk’ challenging judiciary’s legitimacy

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//March 7, 2017//

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Sheboygan County Law Day
Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Roggensack

Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Pat Roggensack is calling on members of the legal community and others who understand how the courts work to push back against comments that challenge the legitimacy of the federal and state judiciary.

Roggensack’s comments came during a lecture she delivered on Tuesday as part of the Marquette University Law School’s Hollows series. Addressing a room packed with judges, lawyers, justices and others, she talked mostly about what she deemed a trend of “tough talk” that courts have faced following the release of recent decisions.

“Institutional legitimacy is critical to the effect of the judicial branch of government because voluntary compliance with court decisions is at the foundation of judicial authority,” Roggensack said.

She argued that, historically, those who have disagreed with judicial decisions have not gone so far as to attack the judiciary in a general sense and imply that a judge’s impartiality or ethics were questionable.

“Well, times have changed,” Roggensack said.

She noted that much of that change has been helped along by the rise of the Internet and social media.

Roggensack, generally believed to be the leader of the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservative faction, did not mention recent comments made by President Donald Trump. But she did make note of Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous court-packing plan from 1937. Going on to give several examples from Wisconsin, she quoted a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial blasting the Wisconsin Supreme Court for a decision last year involving the release of law-enforcement training videos.

She also quoted Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director Matthew Rothschild, who called the court “corrupt, rigged and renegade” in response to the court’s recent decision concerning John Doe investigations into Gov. Scott Walker and his campaign.

Roggensack said the attacks were political and ultimately stemmed from the speaker’s or writer’s dislike for the decision the court had reached.

“They are not critical of court decisions based on the underlying reasoning of the court of the application of the rule of law,” Roggensack said.

She also said such attacks can be made from within the court, pointing to dissents from her colleagues on the bench, Justices Shirley Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley, and to dissents written by late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Roggensack said the crowd gathered on Tuesday can help mitigate the harm caused by comments of that sort by starting a dialogue.  She said most such comments are not intended to harm the courts.

“We should be unafraid to discuss the unintended consequences of their tough talk with them,” she said. “We should educate those who are interested in the courts but do not understand how they work.”

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