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Justice Louis Butler’s response to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel questionnaire starts off with liberal pablum that screams activist:

I first became a lawyer, then a judge, and now a Justice, because I am dedicated to achieving equal justice for all people, including the downtrodden and those who lack resources. I embrace the sentiment that injustice to anyone is intolerable, and that everyone should have access to the courts and a right to be heard.

We’ve heard this line thirce in two weeks, which means he actually thinks he believes it:

I also consider myself to be a textualist. I find it to be more effective to “read the words on the page,” discerning what the legislature has actually done, as opposed to what I think it may have intended to do.

He made a similar comment last week to the Milwaukee Bar Association forum (and to the MJS ed board):

My philosophy has been the same for years, to uphold the Constitution, to hold wrongdoers accountable, interpret and apply the law. I have a framework, I start with the facts of the case, the United States Constitution, the Wisconsin Constitution, state statute, and when I interpret state statutes, I am a textualist in the mold of Hugo Black or Antonin Scalia. I look at our common law when the legislature has not spoken, and I look at precedent, and then I put all of that to the facts of the case. The goal in every single case is justice, that’s why we’re there.

A textualist like Scalia? Were decisions he joined like In Re Jerrell CJ texualist? Or his own opinion in Solie or Kolupar?

Finally, in several fora Justice Butler has described his method of approaching as such: “The process I go through is to look first at the U.S. Constitution, then the Wisconsin Constitution, state statutes where the legislature has spoken, our common law where the legislature has not spoken, and our prior precedent.”

I find it interesting that he identifies the US Constitution as his first source of law, then the Wisconsin Constitution. That’s interesting because he relies on the Wisconsin Constitution for major decisions in Knapp and Dubose, for instance, when the US Supreme Court had already interpreted the US Constitution in like cases. Or how about this quote from McGrew:

[T]hat the United States Supreme Court has concluded in Williams v. Florida (1970), that the Sixth Amendment did not require that a jury be comprised of 12 persons has limited import on what the Wisconsin Constitution secures. See State v. Knapp; State v. Dubose. [98]

Hopefully tomorrow I can tackle his purported respect for precedent, and also the GBPG endorsement and Butler’s comments on Thomas and Judicial Ideology to the MJS Editorial Board.

• Remember when he was lampooned? - September 4th, 2008
• The Media has it both ways - September 3rd, 2008
• New MULS Law faculty blog - September 2nd, 2008
• Concluding Convention Thoughts - September 1st, 2008
• Another Nixon Observation - August 30th, 2008