Wisconsin letter of the day

From Lester Pines, counsel for State Sen. Mark Miller, to the clerk of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, blasting Deputy Attorney General Kevin St. John for coming "perilously close" to violating SCR 20:8.2* (.pdf; 3 pgs.).

Meanwhile the Supreme Court's docket still shows oral argument scheduled for Monday, June 6, related to Scott Walker's building maintenance supervisor Mike Huebsch's petition for a supervisory writ, a petition grounded in challenging a temporary injunction that doesn't even exist any more (it was superseded by Sumi's final judgment).

Fitz Van Walker's multi-ring circus gets more ridiculous every day.

It's gotten so bad that our old friend perfesser to the wing-nuts Rick Esenberg, at the Marquette law school's faculty blog refers to "[t]he Zimmerman and Goodland cases" in support of his allegedly profound doctrinal claims, despite Goodland v. Zimmerman being one case.**

I guess when all you have is hand waving, inventing precedent works too.

And Journal Communications, Inc. loves the guy, of course.

It's comical.

* Supreme Court Rule 20:8.2: "A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge ... "

** Goodland v. Zimmerman is a 1943 decision of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. If the Open Meetings Law didn't contain eleventeen provisions expressly superseding the holding in Goodland, this case would be a slam dunk, and Judge Sumi would have ruled opposite to what she has done. What I find amusing is that so-called judicial conservatives (e.g., Rick Esenberg) now deriding Judge Sumi for following to the letter what the legislature has laid down instead of the holding of seven "black robed elites" in Goodland will just as facilely in different circumstances deride similarly situated judges for following judge-made doctrine instead of the clear directives of the democratically elected legislature. There are no judicial "principles" to so-called judicial conservatism. It is purely a matter of what is convenient under which circumstances that are most suitable for the furtherance of conservative political policy, in this case, the gutting of the collective bargaining rights of public employees.

Other examples, from the work of Justice Prosser, may be found here.

Conversely, Judge Sumi's reasoning is an example of what conservative jurisprudence is supposed to be. Which is why, if it does indeed come to pass that the "conservatives" on the Wisconsin Supreme Court do get around to reversing Judge Sumi, as is desperately pleaded for by the Fitz Van Walker regime and its disciples, that court's own reasoning cannot be anything other than tortured and circuitous by comparison to Judge Sumi's. And the attendant celebration by the disciples will be even sillier.