Wisconsin Chief Justice Talks Election Issues with UC Law Students

Over the course of her three-day visit to the University of Cincinnati College of Law, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson is visiting classrooms and offering insight into topics ranging from prenatal torts to hate speech, from "Substantive Canons of Statutory Interpretation" to "What a Judge Looks for in a Law Clerk."

Given an opportunity in her schedule on Tuesday to pick the subject matter herself, she shared views with the UC law community on a timely topic – the impact of the election process on the judiciary.

Abrahamson was spending the first three days of this week in Cincinnati as part of the college’s 2008 Judge-in-Residence program. One of the nation’s longest serving and most respected members of the judiciary, Abrahamson became the first female Supreme Court justice in Wisconsin in 1976, and the state’s first female Chief Justice in 1996.

During a lunchtime session with students on Tuesday, she presented the talk, "John Grisham, Tom Moyer and You."

Her talk could hardly have been more timely: Wisconsin voters were due to go to the polls on Tuesday to vote in non-partisan races, including the seat of one of Abrahamson’s colleagues on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. (Abrahamson herself noted that she voted using an absentee ballot).

The recipient of honorary doctorates from 15 different universities told the students, "As I will explain, Mr. Grisham and Justice Moyer share something in common, and it’s something you, too, should care about."

Grisham was the keynote speaker in late January when the College of Law celebrated its 175th anniversary with a gala dinner, and his visit came the week before the release of his latest novel, "The Appeal." The new book, Abrahamson said, deals with the influence of substantial amounts of outside money in a fictional race for a state Supreme Court seat in Mississippi, in the hopes that electing a preferred candidate will produce a specific outcome in a case that will soon be heard by the court.

"Although this is fiction, the concept of outside groups coming into a state and spending lots of money on advertising (in a judicial election) is very troublesome," Abrahamson said. "This has happened in many states."

Even in today’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, Abrahamson said that the candidates themselves raised in the neighborhood of $300,000 each to support their campaigns, but that several million dollars are being injected from forces outside the campaigns.

The focus in the race is on which candidate is tougher on crime – an odd question, Abrahamson suggested, given that the Wisconsin Supreme Court doesn’t hand out criminal sentences and that less than one-third of the court’s docket deals with appeals of criminal cases.

"But (being tough on crime) is the same front issue used in Grisham’s book," Abrahamson said. "Newspapers in Wisconsin are writing that this election is playing out like Grisham’s book. You should be aware of this. In Ohio, you have elections (for judicial seats) and a lot of money is spent on them. You should read Grisham, and you should be aware."

Abrahamson’s concern is mirrored by her Ohio counterpart, Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer. Moyer is a member of the board of "Justice at Stake," a non-partisan advocacy group worried about the same kind of fictional scenarios laid out in Grisham’s book.

Moyer even wrote an op-ed column advocating public financing for state Supreme Court races that ran in a number of papers across Wisconsin, Abrahamson said. Recently, all seven members of Abrahamson’s court signed a letter endorsing public financing for state Supreme Court races.

"Wisconsin now has an opportunity to improve the faith in our courts," Abrahamson told the UC students. "These elections where the campaigning becomes so negative cast a pall over the entire judiciary."

Abrahamson challenged the students to read Grisham’s book (after exams, she jokingly added), read what Moyer has written on the subject of judicial elections and then get involved as future lawyers in the subject.

That call to action was not surprising, given Abrahamson’s own reputation as an advocate as a judge who rarely stands still.

"In Wisconsin, it used to be said that the Supreme Court was so quiet that if you listened carefully, you could hear the justices’ arteries hardening. Not on my watch," she laughed.