No Runny Eggs

It may be short on actual names attached to the attributed version, but Christian Schneider put up the most-complete timeline yet of a version of the events surrounding the incident between Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley, extending from before the incident itself to the leak of the news to Soros-funded “media”, over at National Review. Let’s see if I can do the Cliff Notes’ version:

– The week prior to the incident, three of the justices were prepared to issue an order on the case of Act 10. Prosser wanted to delay some to avoid the appearance of rushing as oral arguments occured on 6/6, and apparently reached a deal with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson that the order would be issued on 6/14.

– On 6/13, no notice that an order would be forthcoming had been made, so at 5:30 pm, Prosser and the other conservative Justices went looking for Abrahamson to get an explanation. They found her in Bradley’s office.

– Prosser remained outside the office and got into a heated discussion with Abrahamson over the issue of timing of the release of the order.

– Bradley rushed out to confront Prosser, with one source saying she was shaking a fist in his face and another saying they were “nose to nose”.

– Prosser pushed Bradley about the shoulders to get her out of his face, and in the course of that, contacted her neck. At the same time, another Justice was attempting to pull Bradley back from Prosser.

– On 6/15, 2 days after he had been notified of the incident by Bradley, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs talked to all 7 Justices, including the not-present Justice Patrick Crooks, about violence in the workplace. No further action appears to have been made by the Capitol Police, which has jurisdiction in the Capitol building and thus the Supreme Court offices, and to date, nobody has pressed criminal charges.

I do recommend, as always, reading the entire piece. There are a bunch of details I left out of the above summary.

Revisions/extensions (10:10 pm 6/28/2011) – Two people who have been following the ins and outs of the Supreme Court longer than I have weighed in on just how long the Court has been dysfunctional, and who the constant in the dysfunctionality is.

John Mercure of WTMJ-AM interviewed former Supreme Court Justice William Callow (he served between 1977 and 1992 and still is an active reserve judge) on his show this afternoon, and Callow fingered Abrahamson as the chief troublemaker.

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, in a comment on his Sunday morning take, remembered that the majority of the court had endorsed Abrahamson’s opponent…in 1999.

I note two things – the second-longest serving Justice (Bradley) joined the Court in 1995, and three current Justices were not on the Court in 1999.

Also, welcome Memeorandum readers.

Over at his new gig at the Wisconsin Reporter, Kevin Binversie put up the most-exhaustive take yet on the Supreme Rumble. I’ll give you the last three paragraphs to whet your whistle:

There are a lot of factors here, all of which are along the lines of stupid and petty. So stupid and petty, you’d think we were dealing with toddlers and not some of the most respected legal minds in the state of Wisconsin.

Yes, Prosser has a temper and a short fuse. This is a well-known and documented fact since his Assembly days. However, what’s lost in a lot of the coverage is the apparent sycophantic defense Walsh Bradley has for Chief Justice Abrahamson if the “she charged him version” of the events is true.

The battle of factions within the Wisconsin Supreme Court is well-known in both the state’s legal and political circles; but now it’s to a point that public back-stabbing and reports of physical altercations only help feed growing concern the court is teetering into professional dysfunction. Somewhere, someone has to be the adult in the room; but from the look of things, we’re a long way from that with the justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The battle of the factions really started to boil over when Justice Michael Gabelman defeated appointed Justice Louis Butler in 2008. Since then, Abrahamson, Bradley and Patrick Crooks have done everything they could to remove Gabelman from the Court, going so far as to ignore the recommendation of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission that an allegation of false political advertising against Gabelman in that campaign did not warrant action by the Court, which prompted the “intemperate” remark from Prosser behind closed doors and leaked from a Bradley e-mail.