#Justice Patience Roggensack

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Wisconsin’s conservative-controlled Supreme Court ruled Friday that absentee ballot drop boxes may be placed only in election offices and that no one other than the voter can return a ballot in person, dealing a critical defeat to Democrats in the battleground state.

The court did not address the question of whether anyone other than the voter can return his or her own ballot by mail. Election officials and others had argued that drop boxes are a secure and convenient way for voters to return ballots.

The decision sets absentee ballot rules for the Aug. 9 primary and the fall election; Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are seeking reelection in key races.

The court’s 4-3 ruling also has critical implications in the 2024 presidential race, in which Wisconsin will again be among a handful of battleground states. President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 by just under 21,000 votes, four years after Trump narrowly won the state by a similar margin.

The popularity of absentee voting exploded during the pandemic in 2020, with more than 40% of all voters casting mail ballots, a record high. At least 500 drop boxes were set up in more than 430 communities for the election that year, including more than a dozen each in Madison and Milwaukee — the state’s two most heavily Democratic cities.

After Trump lost the state, he and Republicans alleged that drop boxes facilitated cheating, even though they offered no evidence. Democrats, elections officials and some Republicans argued the boxes are secure.

The conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty sued in 2021. The state Supreme Court in February barred the use of drop boxes outside election clerk offices in the April election for local offices, such as mayor, city council and school board seats. The court ruled Friday on the question of whether to allow secure ballot boxes in places such as libraries and grocery stores.

State law is silent on drop boxes. The court said the absence of a prohibition in state law does not mean that drop boxes are legal.

“Nothing in the statutory language detailing the procedures by which absentee ballots may be cast mentions drop boxes or anything like them,” Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority.

The court said absentee ballots can be returned only to the clerk’s office or a designated alternative site but that site cannot be an unstaffed drop box. The bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission had told local election officials the boxes can be placed at multiple locations and that ballots can be returned by people other than the voter, but put that on hold pending the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Rick Esenberg, president of the conservative law firm that brought the case, said the ruling “provides substantial clarity on the legal status of absentee ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting.” He said it also makes clear that state law, not guidance from the Elections Commission, is the final word on how elections are run.

Concerns about the safety of drop boxes expressed by the majority “is downright dangerous to our democracy” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote in dissent.

“But concerns about drop boxes alone don’t fuel the fires questioning election integrity,” she wrote. “Rather, the kindling is primarily provided by voter suppression efforts and the constant drumbeat of unsubstantiated rhetoric in opinions like this one, not actual voter fraud.”

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature have also tried to enact laws limiting the use of absentee ballots, but Evers has vetoed them.

Republicans have made similar moves since Trump’s defeat to tighten access to ballots in other battleground states. The restrictions especially target voting methods that have been rising in popularity, erecting hurdles to mail balloting and early voting that saw explosive growth during the pandemic.

Bradley was joined in the majority by fellow conservative Justices Patience Roggensack, Brian Hagedorn and Chief Justice Annette Ziegler. In addition to Ann Walsh Bradley, Justices Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky dissented.

#us politics #news #wisconsin #state supreme court #voter disenfranchisement #voter suppression #absentee ballot #ballot drop boxes #Gov. Tony Evers #sen. ron johnson #2022 #Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty #Justice Rebecca Bradley #Rick Esenberg #Justice Ann Walsh Bradley #Justice Patience Roggensack #Justice Brian Hagedorn #Justice Annette Ziegler #chief Justice Annette Ziegler #Justice Rebecca Dallet #Justice Jill Karofsky

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Wisconsin judge orders former chief justice to turn over records related to impeachment advice

Former Chief Justice Patience Roggensack was one of three former Supreme Court justices asked by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to give him advice on pursuing impeachment.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin judge on Friday ordered the former chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to produce records related to her work advising the Republican Assembly speaker on whether to impeach a current justice. Former Chief Justice Patience Roggensack was one of three former Supreme Court justices asked by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to give him advice on pursuing…

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#afternoon update #Chief Justice Patience Roggensack #Crime & courts #impeachment #Justice Janet Protasiewicz #Robin Vos

[beardedmrbean]

A 15-year-old who shot eight people at Mayfair Mall in 2020 should be tried as an adult, a divided Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The majority in the 4-3 decision declared Children's Court Judge Brittany Grayson erroneously exercised her discretion when she denied prosecutors' request that the boy be waived to adult court.

The Court of Appeals called for a new hearing on the issue, but the Supreme Court said that was unnecessary.

"There exists no reasonable basis for denying the State's waiver petition," Chief Justice Annette Ziegler wrote. She was joined in the majority opinion by justices Patience Roggensack, Rebecca Bradley and Jill Karofsky.

Justice Brian Hagedorn dissented, joined by justices Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet.

"Although another judge might have reasonably reached a different conclusion on the same set of facts, this decision was within the discretion the law affords to circuit court judges," Hagedorn wrote.

"The majority, however, displaces the circuit court's discretion with its own, even as it pays lip service to the deferential standard of review we are duty-bound to apply."

The case began in juvenile court, so the defendant has only been identified by a pseudonym, Xander. The boy, 15 at the time of the shootings, is charged with eight counts of first-degree reckless injury — punishable by up to 15 years in prison for adults — and being a minor with a gun, a misdemeanor. Prosecutors say he opened fire in the mall on Nov. 20, 2020, injuring three people in a group he was confronting, a friend who was with him, and four random shoppers.

Dozens of police responded and the mall was closed until the next day.

Prosecutors sought waiver to adult court. Grayson, after hearing from a social worker and a psychologist, determined Xander should remain in juvenile court. Xander had already been adjudicated delinquent in another case and hadn't complied entirely with his treatment.

The Court of Appeals reversed the decision and ordered a new hearing before a different judge. Xander's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to weigh in first.

#nunyas news

[klbmsw]

[recentlyheardcom]

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A second conservative former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice asked to investigate taking the unprecedented step of impeaching a liberal justice on Wednesday came out against it.Former Justice Jon Wilcox told The Associated Press that there was nothing to justify impeaching Justice Janet Protasiewicz, as some Republican lawmakers have floated because of comments she made during the campaign about redistricting and donations she accepted from the Wisconsin Democratic Party.“I do not favor impeachment,” Wilcox told AP in a telephone interview. “Impeachment is something people have been throwing around all the time. But I think it's for very serious things.”The Wisconsin Constitution reserves impeachment for “corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors.”Wilcox, along with former justices David Prosser and Patience Roggensack, were tapped by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to look into possible impeachment.Prosser advised against impeachment in an email to Vos on Friday, saying “there should be no effort to impeach Justice Protasiewicz on anything we know now.” Prosser told Vos he did not think Protasiewicz had met the standard for impeachment.Roggensack has not returned numerous messages seeking comment, including Wednesday. Vos did not respond to a text seeking comment Wednesday.Vos floated impeaching Protasiewicz if she did not recuse from a redistricting lawsuit seeking to toss GOP-drawn legislative district boundary maps. On Friday, she declined to recuse herself, and the court voted 4-3 along partisan lines to hear the redistricting challenge.Vos asked three former justices to review the possibility of impeachment, but he refused to name them. Prosser told the AP that he was on the panel, but other justices either said they weren't on it or did not comment.In a court filing, Vos identified the other two as Roggensack and Wilcox. All three of those picked by Vos are conservatives. Roggensack served 20 years on the court and her retirement this year created the vacancy that Protasiewicz filled with her election win in April.Wilcox was on the court from 1992 to 2007 and Prosser served from 1998 to 2016.A state judiciary disciplinary panel has also rejected several complaints lodged against Protasiewicz that alleged she violated the judicial code of ethics with comments she made during the campaign.Prosser turned that email over to the liberal watchdog group American Oversight as part of an open records request. The group is also suing, arguing that the panel created by Vos is violating the state open meetings law.Vos, in his court filing Wednesday, said he never asked the three retired justices to prepare a report or any other written work.Wilcox said he had no plans to submit a written report. He said he, Prosser and Roggensack met one time and he told them then that he didn't think impeachment was warranted.Wilcox said he informed Vos of his opinion within the past two days.Vos said that his seeking advice from the former justices was no different from any lawmaker meeting privately with someone and is not a violation of the state open meetings law.“I have never asked them to meet with one another, to discuss any topics, or to conduct any governmental business,” Vos told the court. “I do not know whether the retired justices have or will collaborate with one another, as I have not given them a directive on how they are supposed to research the topic of impeachment.”Vos raised the threat of impeachment in August just after Protasiewicz joined the court, flipping majority control from conservatives to liberals for the first time in 15 years.Vos argued that Protasiewicz had prejudged the redistricting case when during her campaign she called the maps “rigged” and “unfair.” Vos also said her acceptance of nearly $10 million from the Wisconsin Democratic Party would unduly influence her ruling.Protasiewicz on Friday rejected those arguments, noting that other justices have accepted campaign cash and not recused from cases.

She also noted that she never promised or pledged to rule on the redistricting lawsuit in any way.Other justices, both conservative and liberal, have spoken out in the past on issues that could come before the court, although not always during their run for office like Protasiewicz did. Current justices have also accepted campaign cash from political parties and others with an interest in court cases and haven’t recused themselves. But none of them has faced threats of impeachment.Prosser and Roggensack accepted in-kind donations from the Wisconsin Republican Party when they were on the court. Roggensack also accepted campaign cash from Republican candidate committees and county parties during her last run in 2013.Roggensack and Prosser voted to enact a rule allowing justices to sit on cases involving campaign donors. In 2017, a year after Prosser left the court, Roggensack voted to reject a call from 54 retired justices and judges to enact stricter recusal rules.Both Roggensack and Wilcox donated $1,000 each to a Protasiewicz opponent, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow. She finished third in the primary behind Protasiewicz and another conservative candidate, Dan Kelly. Wilcox in 2020 gave Kelly $500.Prosser also donated $500 to Kelly’s campaign this year. Roggensack didn’t give money to Kelly, but she did endorse him after he advanced in the primary.

[newswireml]

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Election: The Big Race You May Not Know About#Wisconsins #Supreme #Court #Election #Big #Race

Wisconsin voters are heading to the polls Tuesday to determine which two candidates will proceed to compete for an open seat on the state Supreme Court. What may seem like a very specific statewide race in fact has massive implications for abortion, voting rights, and even national democracy. The departure of a conservative judge, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, has left both parties eager to…

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[unclesamsmisguidedclub]

Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down Governor's Safer-at-Home Order

Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down Governor’s Safer-at-Home Order

The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, struck down Governor Tony Evers’ “Safer-at-home” order that closed businesses. The court ruled that the businesses may open immediately. One of the Justices, Rebecca Bradley, even compared it to the irrational internment of the Japanese-Americans in WWII.

https://twitter.com/mcpli/status/1260703018653286402?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ct…

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#Andrea Palm #Chief Justice Patience Roggensack. #Coronavirus #COVID-19 #Governor Tony Evers #pandemic #Safer-at-home order #stay at home orders #Uncle Sam&039;s Misguided Children #Wisconsin supreme Court

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday will cast their primary ballots in what's turned into an expensive and high-stakes battle for control of the state Supreme Court in a key political battleground where power is divided between a Democratic Governor and a Republican-controlled legislature.

Voters will narrow the field of candidates down to two, who will then advance to April's general election for a seat on a court where conservatives currently hold a 4-3 majority. Although the election is technically nonpartisan -- there are no party labels on the ballot -- interest groups align, party operations mobilize and money flows into races for its seats as if they were partisan contests.

The departure of a conservative justice, Patience Roggensack, has given liberals an opportunity to seize the majority on a court that could decide on issues such as abortion, redistricting, and voting rights ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Conservatives have controlled the state's high court for 14 years -- a span in which the court has sided with Republicans' union-busting efforts and affirmed voting restrictions, including ID requirements and a ban on ballot drop boxes.

"This seat is crucial to the balance of the court, and the court is crucial to the balance of the state," said Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of its Elections Research Center.

The candidates hoping to advance to the April general election are liberals Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County circuit court judge, and Everett Mitchell, a circuit judge in Dane County; and conservatives Daniel Kelly, a former state Supreme Court justice, and Jennifer Dorow, a judge perhaps best known for presiding over the trial of a man convicted of killing six and injuring scores more in a 2021 attack on a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

Outside money has flooded the race, surpassing candidate spending. As of Thursday afternoon, orders for TV and radio ads focused on the race had hit $7 million, according to advertising tracked by Kantar Media/CMAG for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's law school. Experts say the spending on the race could smash the previous record -- $15.2 million spent on a 2004 Illinois Supreme Court race, according to the liberal-leaning Brennan Center -- for the most expensive campaign for a single state Supreme Court seat.

The court could become the final arbiter on a host of critical issues in Wisconsin in the coming years -- including the fate of the state's 1849 law prohibiting abortion in nearly all cases. The US Supreme Court's decision last summer ending federal legal protections for the procedure has super-charged the rhetoric -- and spending -- around abortion in the Wisconsin race.

The state Supreme Court could also play a crucial role in the 2024 election. Wisconsin was a key location of former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his 2020 loss, and the refusal of a conservative justice on the state Supreme Court to go along with an effort that year to toss out ballots in two heavily Democratic counties looms large in the rivalry between the two right-leaning candidates in this year's race.

#us politics #news #cnn #cnn politics #2023 #Wisconsin #Wisconsin supreme Court #election #2023 election #Patience Roggensack #abortions #redistricting #voting rights #voter id laws #ballot drop boxes #Janet Protasiewicz #Everett Mitchell #Daniel Kelly #Jennifer Dorow #Brennan Center for Justice #Kantar Media #cmag

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Attorneys: Court should protect school chief’s powers

Republicans have been trying for years to reduce the superintendent’s powers. The position is officially nonpartisan but liberal-leaning superintendents have controlled the office for nearly two decades.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The state Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with whether to let the governor trump the state schools superintendent’s policies, a move that would hand the governor de facto control of Wisconsin schools and undo a ruling the justices handed down two years ago establishing the superintendent’s independence.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm, fi…

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#Chief Justice Patience Roggensack #Gov. Tony Evers #Justice Ann Walsh Bradley #Justice Rebecca Dallet #Scott Walker #wisconsin GOP

[kp777]

[recentlyheardcom]

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — One of three former Wisconsin Supreme Court justices asked to review possible impeachment of a current justice refused to tell a judge Friday who else was looking into that question.Former Justice David Prosser called a lawsuit alleging violations of the state open meetings law “frivolous," saying those looking into impeachment met once but are operating independently and not as a governmental body subject to the law.Prosser and the attorney for Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos both refused to tell the judge during Friday's hearing who else was tabbed by Vos to review impeachment. Vos is looking into possible impeachment of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz if she does not recuse herself from a pair of redistricting lawsuits.The liberal watchdog group American Oversight sued Monday, alleging the group of justices was violating the state open meetings law by not letting the public attend its meetings. Prosser is the only former justice to say publicly that he is among the group.Prosser indicated during the hearing before Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington that three former justices met at least once.“Three people had lunch together," Prosser said. "We had lunch together because we didn’t know what we were really supposed to do. If other people are going to have input, it’s going to be their input, not my input. I think this is an absolutely frivolous case.”When asked directly by the judge if he would name who the other two former justices were, Prosser said, “No.” Likewise, Vos attorney Matthew Fernholz said he would not disclose their names without first consulting with Vos. Vos has repeatedly declined to name who he asked, only saying he tabbed three former justices to look into impeachment.None of the eight other living former justices, six of whom are conservatives, have said they are a part of the review. The most recently retired justice, conservative Patience Roggensack, hung up when contacted by The Associated Press to ask if she was on the panel.The judge asked Prosser if the group intended to meet again.“The people that I had lunch with had the same view of what we might say and we would do it individually," Prosser said. He said the group was not producing a formal report and Vos never told him he was creating a panel.“The word ‘panel’ never came up," Prosser said. “Certainly we were not ordered to do anything. ... This is not a governmental body by any stretch of the imagination.”Vos himself called it a panel when he announced its formation Sept. 13.“I am asking a panel of former members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review and advise what the criteria are for impeachment,” Vos said on WISN-AM.Vos said he was asking the group to “come back with an analysis to say whether or not (impeachment) is possible and how it should occur.”Prosser and Fernholz on Friday both asserted that the former justices were like any other constituent that a public official may meet with to gather advice.“That’s done all the time," Prosser said. "That is not something that is going to require notices and people coming and listening to everything that’s happening. That’s just not realistic at all.”Fernholz took it a step further, saying "The secret panel does not exist.”American Oversight had asked the judge to order the group not to meet. But Judge Remington said he can't consider the case until after the district attorney has 20 days to investigate American Oversight's complaint. That deadline is Oct. 9. Remington set another hearing for Oct. 19.“It could be very well, Justice Prosser, that this is not a committee that is not subject to public meetings law," Remington said. "We just don’t know because the facts are uncertain.”Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said in court Friday that it appeared to him the group may be violating the open meetings law, calling it “astonishing.”“If nothing else they should be meeting in public," Ozanne said.But he said his investigation hasn’t gotten far, in part, because he doesn’t know who the other former justices working on the issue are.

American Oversight attorney Christa Westerberg said the group of justices is subject to the open meetings law because Vos created it to advise him, it has a defined membership and he asked that it report back to him with recommendations.“We don’t have secret panels in Wisconsin," she said. "The work of government isn’t secret. I don’t think this is a very heavy lift. ... It just boggles my mind that all of this can be done in secret.”Protasiewicz’s installment in August flipped the high court to liberal control for the first time in 15 years. Vos has called for her to recuse herself in the redistricting cases because of comments she made on the campaign trail calling the state’s heavily gerrymandered, GOP-drawn electoral maps “unfair” and “rigged,” as well as the nearly $10 million she accepted from the Wisconsin Democratic Party.Protasiewicz has yet to decide whether she will recuse herself from the cases. The court has also yet to decide whether it will take up the lawsuits.

[feelingbluepolitics]

"A Wisconsin Supreme Court justice was condemned for her offhand comment blaming a state county's coronavirus case flare-up on meatpacking employees and not 'regular folks.'"

Some called the comment "elitist." Some said it was "classist." Some went straight to the point and called it "racist."

Chief Justice Patience Roggensack's current term on the court expires July 31, 2023.

She likely isn't the worst, though.

"The justice made the remark toward the end of Tuesday’s hearing in the politically divisive case, Wisconsin Legislature vs. Andrea Palm, in which GOP legislators are challenging the executive powers of Evers and the state health chief. Conservative justices, who are in the majority, were highly skeptical of Palm’s authority to issue emergency public health orders. Justice Rebecca Bradley questioned whether her actions didn’t amount to 'tyranny' and even compared the restrictions to Japanese internment campus during World War II."

[newswireml]

Five Points On The Upcoming Wisconsin Election That Could Have Consequences For 2024#Points #Upcoming #Wisconsin #Election #Consequences

At the end of February — the sleepy, dead days of winter when the 2022 midterms have shrunk in the rearview and 2024 still feels far off — Wisconsin will host a blockbuster primary for an open seat on the state Supreme Court, a race with significant national ramifications.  Justice Patience Roggensack, a conservative in her early 80s, is not seeking another term. That gives liberals the…

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[the-sayuri-rin]

Hagedorn and conservative Chief Justice Patience Roggensack joined the court's three liberal members in the majority Conservative Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler dissented The ruling means 69,000 voters will not be removed from the rolls. None of them voted in 2020

[multipleservicelisting]

Shirley Abrahamson, Trailblazing Wisconsin Judge, Dies at 87

Shirley Abrahamson, an indefatigable jurist known for her activist voice and tart dissents who was the first woman on the Wisconsin Supreme Court and later its first female chief justice, died on Dec. 19 in Berkeley, Calif. She was 87.

Her son, Daniel, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.

Justice Abrahamson spent 43 years on the bench, 19 as the chief justice. She was long the only woman on the court, but when she retired in 2019 and moved to California, five of the seven justices were women. There are now six.

At Justice Abrahamson’s retirement ceremony, her friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court, said in a videotaped tribute, “As lawyer, law teacher and judge, she has inspired legions to follow in her way, to strive constantly to make the legal system genuinely equal and accessible to all who dwell in our fair land.”

Justice Ginsburg died in September.

In opinions, speeches and articles, Justice Abrahamson often wrote about the rights that state constitutions provide citizens — like protections against unreasonable searches and seizures — but the federal constitution does not.

“New federalism,” she wrote in the SMU Law Review in 1982, “describes the willingness of state courts to assert themselves as the final arbiters in questions of their citizens’ individual rights by relying on their own law, especially the state constitution.”

She was perhaps best known for her dissents, like the one in State v. Mitchell, a 1992 case in which the court ruled that the increased penalty a defendant could receive for a hate crime was unconstitutional. (The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision.)

“Bigots are free to think and express themselves as they wish, except that they may not engage in criminal conduct in furtherance of their beliefs,” Justice Abrahamson wrote. “The state’s interest in punishing bias-related criminal conduct relates only to the protection of equal rights and the prevention of crime, not to the suppression of free expression.”

She also opposed the court’s divided decision in 2015 to end the investigation into whether Gov. Scott Walker had illegally coordinated with conservative groups during the campaign to recall him three years earlier.

“Lest the length, convoluted analysis and overblown rhetoric of the majority opinion obscure its effect, let me state clearly,” Justice Abrahamson wrote. “The majority opinion adopts an unprecedented and faulty interpretation of Wisconsin’s campaign finance law and of the First Amendment.”

Justice Abrahamson had by then acquired a national reputation. In 1979, she was one of several female jurists considered by President Jimmy Carter as possible replacements for Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. (who, as it turned out, stayed on the bench until 1990).

In 1993, Justice Abrahamson was on the short list to succeed Justice Byron R. White. President Bill Clinton chose Justice Ginsburg.

“She felt incredibly honored — and thought it was great fun — simply to have had her name floated as someone possibly under consideration,” Daniel Abrahamson said in an interview. “She expressed neither surprise nor regret at not getting the nod.”

Shirley Schlanger was born on Dec. 17, 1933, in Manhattan. Her father, Leo, and her mother, Ceilia (Sauerteig) Abrahamson, ran a grocery store.

At 6, Shirley declared her intention to be a lawyer. She would later say that having immigrant parents — they were both from Poland — taught her to believe that “this country was open” and that “no doors were closed.”

After graduating from Hunter College High School and New York University, she married Seymour Abrahamson and accompanied him to to Indiana University, Bloomington, where she got her law degree in 1956 and he earned a Ph.D. in genetics.

The couple then left for the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where she studied under the law school professor J. Willard Hurst, a pioneer in the field of legal history. She received a degree in legal history from the university’s law school in 1962 and was soon hired as the first woman lawyer at what was then known as La Follette, Sinykin, Doyle & Anderson, where she rose to be a name partner.

A legal generalist, she was best known as a tax lawyer. While working at the firm, she helped write the City of Madison’s equal-opportunity law and was director of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1967 to 1974.

She was named to the court by Gov. Patrick Lucey, a Democrat, in 1976, and was elected to 10-year terms in 1979, 1989, 1999 and 2009. As the senior member of the court, she became chief justice in 1996.

After her ceremonial swearing-in by William H. Rehnquist, the chief justice of the United States, she told the 1,200 people gathered at the state Capitol: “It is my prerogative as the state’s new chief justice to begin with a momentous announcement: The Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings are tied. You’re going to be home in time for the second half.”

Justice Abrahamson helped make the court more accessible. During her tenure, it held its administrative meetings in public and she backed an educational program that brings high school students into the court to hear arguments.

Janine Geske, who served on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the 1990s, recalled the erudition of Justice Abrahamson’s lengthy opinions (“each one of hers is a law school class”) and the excellence she demanded from her colleagues.

“When I first got to the court and circulated my first opinion,” Ms. Geske said in an interview, “I got a four-page, single-spaced memo telling me that it wasn’t strong enough. I remember gasping and feeling bad, but I learned that what she cared about was to strengthen an opinion even when she was on the defense. Some other justices didn’t accept that.”

Indeed, in 2015 the conservative majority on the court, with which she had been in increasing conflict, voted to replace her as chief justice with Patience Roggensack. They took this action after voters approved a constitutional amendment that ended the practice requiring the chief justice to be the most senior member by service.

“I publicly stated that I recommended the change because age does not necessarily mean brilliance or kindness,” William Callow, an opponent of Justice Abrahamson’s who served with her on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1977 to 1992, told The Capital Times in 2016.

Justice Abrahamson sued to block implementation of the amended law. A federal judge tossed out her lawsuit; she appealed but dropped the suit in late 2015, reasoning that pursuing it would take too long. She vowed to remain “independent, impartial, and nonpartisan, and help the court system improve.”

She retired a year after receiving her cancer diagnosis.

In addition to her son, she is survived by a grandson and a sister, Rosalind Sarlin. Her husband died in 2016.

Justice Abrahamson was known for the long hours she devoted to her work, which led her to eat at her desk, at speaking engagements and at restaurants with friends and colleagues. Her single-mindedness was noted by her husband, who spent time in Japan studying the effects of radiation on survivors of the United States’ detonation of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Whatever I leave for her in the refrigerator when I leave,” Professor Abrahamson, told The Associated Press in 1996. “is usually there when I get home seven months later.”

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