An End to this Elitist Insult
Written by Daniel on May 28, 2008 – 9:51 am - Welcome, if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or subscribe to our email newsletter. Thanks for visiting!
In a story decrying the negativity and personal attacks prevalent in state judicial races, the New York Times refers to Justice-elect Michael Gableman as “a small-town trial judge with thin credentials.” This is the culmination of a series of such attacks on Judge Gableman along similar lines, calling him unqualified for the post. So, a brief overview of the Judge’s biography, followed by a comparison to those of his colleagues:
After graduation from law school, he served four years as a clerk for state trial court judges. After a year in private practice, he returned to public service. He was a prosecutor for four years before his appointment as a judge. He was a circuit court judge in Burnett County for six years before his election by the voters of Wisconsin to the Supreme Court.
Now, let’s look at a few current and recently retired members of the Court and their resumes upon election or appointment.
C.J. Abrahamson was a professor at UW Law School. She had never worked on a bench or in a prosecutor’s office before her appointment.
Justice Prosser was also never a judge, though he served on the Wisconsin Tax Appeals Commission for a time. Like Js. Prosser and Wilcox, Justice Bablitch spent most of his career before the Court in the Legislature. J. Bablitch was never a judge before his election to the Supreme Court (in this regard he is similar to the ordained liberal candidate in 2007, Linda Clifford).
Chief Justice Day was also never a judge. After a brief stint as a prosecutor and as counsel to Senator Proxmire in DC, he was an active civil litigator in Madison before his appointment to the Court. (His predecessor at CJ, the late CJ Heffernan, was also never a judge before joining the Court).
Justice Sykes served as a trial court judge for about six years before her appointment to the Supreme Court - about the same amount of time that Judge Gableman was a circuit court judge.
So, of the 17 living serving and retired Supreme Court justices, Judge Gableman has more time as a judge when he joins the Court than did Justices Prosser and Bablitch and Chief Justices Abrahamson and Day. His four years as a front-line prosecutor is more than Justices Abrahamson, Bradley, and Butler have combined.
He’s from a small town - so was J. Wilcox: born in Berlin, Wisconsin, raised in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, and a judge on the Waushara County bench - small towns all.
Judge Gableman has degrees from Ripon College and Hamline University School of Law. J. Wilcox also graduated from Ripon, while J. Crooks went to St. Norbert College and J. Butler went to Lawrence. J. Bradley went to Webster College in Missouri, J. Prosser went to DePauw in Indiana, while J. Roggensack went to Drake in Iowa. Yes, Gableman may not have a degree from UW Law, but with five UW Law grads on the Court already, I think we’re covered in that department. J. Sykes, Geske, Coffey, Ceci, and Ziegler all have degrees from Marquette Law School, which was ranked in the third tier not too long ago.
In sum, Justice-elect Gableman may be from a small town - but so are at least 1/7th of Wisconsinites. He may not have graduated from Harvard Law - no justice has since Myron L. Gordon. His six years of service as a trial court judge is more than several of his colleagues, and so too with his time as a prosecutor. Say what you will of his judicial philosophy, or even his judgment in running that ad, but there’s no need to insult the man by writing in a major story of the Sunday edition of the nation’s premier newspaper that he is “a small-town judge with thin credentials.” The East Coast elitism is just rancid in such a phrase.
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Posted in Review with Bite |
May 30th, 2008 at 9:49 am
And all those other horrible things they said about Gableman! Certainly none of them could be true, could they? Surely Gableman is a wise man, if he can demonstrate his piety in public and praise God’s role in creation?
May 31st, 2008 at 9:25 am
I see a change in Wisconsin.
I see the next Legislature, a Dem controlled group changing the states recall election requirements.
Voters would like to get rid of the corrupt, and want an easier way to do it.
Currently any office, state or local requires signatures based on the Governor’s election total results, gathered within 60 days to have a recall election…and then it can be further interfered with, by the legislature.
I suggest the following:
A recall election must be held within 90 days when:
A petition for recall is demanded, based on the total votes cast, in the last election for any specific office, are equal to or greater than 51% of those total votes cast.
(For the simple mimds: If 51% of the voters decide the person must go, that’s enough to get a new election.
Example: Gableman/Butler totaled 850,000 votes…so if 425,000 sign a petition…its a new election.
Once submitted, the signatures must be validated within 10 days of receipt, or by default, the new election occurs.
Once a recall election is validated, the elected person is placed on a paid leave, at 50% of the salary,with a hold on any official authority being suspended, until the new election results are validated. If the recall fails, the back pay is awarded and no damages can be sought, by any party involved.
For the simple minds: If a recall happens, the person, in office loses official authority and 50% of their salary, during the recall process. Authority would go to 2nd in command, within that elected office.
Finally, if a person is recalled, for any reason, they cannot hold public elected or appointed office for a period of six years from the recall elections validation date.
What this would do, after the insane overreactionary period of recallmania….the parties, candidates and money groups would think very seriously about who they support and the candidates would follow a far higher standard of ethical conduct that we currently have. It would settle, quickly into a standard of ‘recall threat’ that would keep such unethical persons, like Ziegler, from holding office for a period of time, before they could run again.
( For the simple minds: Force them to be more than ethical, not play at the lowest levels of ethical conduct)
It is our elections, and we can lower the standard to get rid of people, if we choose to.
Instead of voters having to play ‘buyer beware’; the elected officials would be under a career ending constant threat of rejection.
It just might attract the best of the best, and end the cheapest to elect.
June 1st, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Young Danny, the problem with Justice Gableman is that he isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, or any drawer.
If the good people at WMC were going to remove the sitting Justice, they had an obligation to come up with a candidate with a brain. Instead we got the living embodiment of low expectations.
Consider his resume. Ripon College, the bottom rung of the higher educational ladder in Wiscosnin. He then headed to the Twin Cities to attend Hamline, which is the lowest-ranked law school in the Midwest. I understand that he wasn’t a candidate for Wisconsin or Marquette, but Hamline? Apparently even Billy Mitchell was beyond his grasp!
That’s the problem with the newest Justice. He’s an intellectual cipher, and you know it if you look at him objectively.
I saw him in person three times in the last week of the campaign. No matter what the question, he has his “pat” little answers which he mouthed on command. The man can’t think on his feet, apparently.