Judge's briefs unceremoniously lowered

Last year, avid supporters of the embattled judge Michael Gableman circulated a list of selected Wisconsin Supreme Court cases meant to impugn the professional integrity of former Justice Louis Butler.

This blog reviewed the list case by case and proved it a steaming heap of laughably uninformed and deliberately misleading effluvia.

Now this season, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Randy Koschnick has taken it upon himself to generate a strikingly similar list of "Select Cases" involving Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, complete with capsule commentary alleged to accurately characterize the holdings and purported effects of each.

It's déjà vu all over again.

One might be charitably inclined to ascribe this latest mess to the handiwork of Koschnick's campaign "adviser" Seamus Flaherty. But alas, Judge Koschnick himself laid claim to personal authorship of the commentary on Wednesday at a candidate forum in Madison.

Daniel D. Blinka, who is a distinguished professor of law at Marquette University, reportedly has had a look at this list this time around. Which is good, because Prof. Blinka is marginally more respected than your humble correspondent.

Not only is he a nationally recognized scholar whose work is frequently cited approvingly by the courts at every level, but he has for many years been providing summaries of State appellate decisions for the Wisconsin Lawyer, a publication of the State bar.

He's also literally written the book on the law of evidence in Wisconsin, among numerous other endeavors. In short, he knows the case law backwards, forwards, inside out, and sideways.

Therefore when Prof. Blinka says — as he does — that Judge Randy Koschnick's "Select Cases" compilation is

a slap-dash effort that is full of grossly inaccurate and misleading statements, lacking even the pretense of objectivity or balance

... you can take it straight to the bank.

And that, as they say, has got to leave a mark.