Author: Hannah Dugan

Chief Justice Emerita Shirley S. Abrahamson, a monumental and historic figure in Wisconsin’s judicial and public service history, died at the age of 87 of pancreatic cancer on December 19. During her fourth 10-year term, she became the longest-serving justice on the Court – almost half that time serving as chief justice. She was the first woman to sit on the Court when Governor Patrick Lucey appointed her to the high court in 1976. She was short-listed twice for presidential appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Breaking glass ceilings and longevity have their places. But it is the content...

2020 marks the 150th anniversaries both of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution confirming male African American suffrage, and of the first full United States census of African-Americans. Commemorating these consequential milestones prompts reflection about the hard fight obtaining, retaining and maintaining both ballot access and census accuracy. The steps towards official African American citizenship and civil rights were absurdly incremental; they began decades before 1870 and were not achieved in law for nearly ten decades after 1870 – upon the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In recent years, the federal judiciary removed critical enforcement...

The end of 2019 inauspiciously brought the seventy-fifth anniversary of Korematsu v. United States, the United States Supreme Court decision affirming the wartime, race-based internment of more than 120,000 persons of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens. While the notorious 1944 Korematsu v. United States[i] decision is decades old, its core concerns haunted 2019, the executive orders allowing mass internment, national interest decision-making based on race, government reparations, and citizenship stats and the counting of persons. Recent court decisions have turned back executive orders requiring the ban of certain foreign-born persons and the registration of others; have...

September 17 is Constitution and Citizenship Day, and the federal observance commemorates not only the creation of the U.S. Constitution but also those who have become citizens. The federal law creation Constitution and Citizenship Day mandates that civic and local government institutions plan for the “complete instruction of citizens in their responsibilities and opportunities as citizens of the United States and locally.” The designation of “Constitution Week” extends from September 17 to 23. September 17 marks the date in 1787 when 39 delegates of the Constitutional Convention signed the proposed Constitution, and then sent it off to the original...

During his life, Milwaukee attorney Frederick Winkler seemed to be everywhere. He was the Zelig of civic life in Milwaukee, the Forrest Gump of the American Civil War. And yet he is essentially unknown today. On the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1 through July 3, 1863) it is fitting to recall one of his most remarkable achievements: commanding Wisconsin’s famous 26th regiment at Gettysburg. [1] The Back-Story About Winkler’s “Field Journal.” Winkler’s life is rather well documented because he remained a celebrated “local boy” after the Civil War, an active legal practitioner and an important public...