The November 2008 edition of WISCONSIN LAWYER, official magazine of the State Bar of Wisconsin, carries an article I co-authored with former Lt. Gov. Margaret Farrow, who has been a wonderful friend and mentor to me over the years.
The two-page “Tips for Practice” essay discusses the ways that WisconsinEye can help Wisconsin attorneys. As you may know, WisconsinEye is basically the Wisconsin version of C-Span. Mrs. Farrow is chairman of the Board of WisconsinEye’s non-profit corporate parent.
The article discusses ways that Wisconsin attorneys can use WisconsinEye’s online video archives to research legislative history. Now, I am generally in the Scalia-Sykes camp (see A Matter of Interpretation and Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County) when it comes to statutory and constitutional interpretation. As an original public meaning textualist, I don’t place much stock in legislative history, for a lot of very good reasons.
However, as former Solicitor General Paul Clement pointed out at the Conference on the Courts & the Presidency, sometimes an advocate needs to use those resources necessary to best serve his client. So even though I don’t like the use of legislative history as a jurisprudential matter, I understand that many judges use it in their decisions, and therefore attorneys need to use it to win over those judges. When those occasions arise that legislative history is crucial to winning a case, Mrs. Farrow and I suggest that an attorney use the video archives on WisEye as another source of such history. In fact, all citizens of Wisconsin ought to use WisconsinEye to learn more about our legislature and our laws.
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