May 2, 2012

Prosser pal wrangles free from Prosser chokehold

Concludes Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack:
I conclude that the Rule of Necessity cannot trump the mandatory directive of the legislature.
So whatever happened to the mandatory directive of the legislature to the chief judge of the court of appeals to appoint a three-judge panel?

Same thing as happened to the mandatory directive of the legislature that under no circumstances is less than two hours notice to be given of a public meeting of the legislature, I suppose: it was duly ignored.

Continues Justice Roggensack:
Statutory interpretation begins with the words chosen by the legislature in order to determine the meaning of the statute.
Yes, and let's look at some words chosen by the legislature:
A judicial conduct ... panel shall consist of either 3 court of appeals judges or 2 court of appeals judges and one reserve judge. Each judge may be selected from any court of appeals district including the potential selection of all judges from the same district. The chief judge of the court of appeals shall select the judges and designate which shall be presiding judge.
Why hasn't the chief judge done so? We are told — continually by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel — that the chief judge is waiting for the Supreme Court's "order" to him to do so. That alleged requirement is pure fantasy. If Justice Roggensack is recusing herself from Justice Prosser's ethics case as the first step to prevent the Supreme Court quorum allegedly required to order the chief judge to appoint a judicial conduct panel, what we're witnessing is the biggest legal travesty since Roggensack and her "conservative" colleagues last June invented a power not authorized by the State constitution in order to protect their fellow Republicans from the consequences of the Republican-controlled legislature's facially illegal activities in passing their union-busting Act 10.

And the State's biggest newspaper is helping enable this farce.

5 comments:

John Casper said...

You rock!

Display Name said...

There's moments where I wish the reporters would stop grabbing stories from blogs. Then there's moments when I wish more reporters would pay attention to blogs to help shape their questions and inquiries.

Mike said...

I wonder if Justice Roggensack knows how bad this makes her look. In normal cases you wouldn't want a direct witness to be involved in making these kinds of decisions, but this is not a normal case and the fact remains that Roggensack knows more about the actual facts here than just about anyone.

If this continues, the result will be to let Prosser off scott free, unaccountable to anyone for his egregious behavior. And it appears that that is the intent.

illusory tenant said...

They don't care about appearances of impropriety. They're much less judges than they are Republican politicians. It might be funny if it wasn't the highest court in the State.

Palli said...

Is this what Prosser is saying: "I can do anything-illegal, or just unseemingly-that I want to do, as long as the other Supreme Court Justices see me do it!"

Is Justice Roggensack is frightened of Prosser herself and just doesn't want to get involved as a self-protection strategy?