Lawrence University honored Louis Butler at its alumni convocation last Friday with the Lucia Russell Briggs Distinguished Achievement Award. Well it should have, on the same extended weekend as Juneteenth Day besides. He remains a groundbreaking jurist of the highest order.
He was the first Black judge to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, appointed by then-Governor Jim Doyle in 2004. In 2009, he was appointed by President Barack Obama to be a U.S. Court judge for the Western District, likewise the first Black judge to be accorded that honor.
What happened in-between, though, should bring people up short if they think that this state has taken strides great enough to overcome racial discord. Because, though what he's accomplished is simply awesome, Louis Butler should have become even more than what he was. It's what the convocation program didn't mention that should also be remembered.
Butler filled a position once occupied by a retiring justice, so in 2008 he tried to be elected to a full ten-year term. He lost, but it's the way he lost that was groundbreaking, too, in its own way. It foreshadowed the emergence, or perhaps the re-emergence, of race-baiting politics that we now see coming--but then didn't.
His opponent was none other than Michael Gableman, the fairly recent grifter carrying out implicit (who knows, even explicit) orders from ex- to gum up the works surrounding the 2020 presidential election as much as he could. He cajoled--threatened by obvious implication--the gerrymandered Republican-dominated state legislature to fund his "investigation" behind "irregularities" in vote-counting for president in Wisconsin, hope to create momentum and declare the election, somehow, invalid. He failed, but not before his empty bluster frustrated and embarrassed the whole state. His "report" which led to nothing substantive had nothing substantive in it, a major waste of taxpayer funding.
In that supreme court election campaign, Gableman smeared Butler with disingenuous accusations of being soft on crime, one of which implied that he had freed a child molester who quickly struck again (demonstrably false; the man was put back in jail and did not commit any such acts until he had served his term. Gableman's campaign knew this.). It would be predictive, too, of the shock smearing to come in later elections. Butler struck back but never sank to Gableman's level of insults. Besides, this was a state supreme court election, one in which such political shenanigans were supposed to be deeply frowned upon and avoided--one of those guardrails which were shattered by Gableman's actions. Butler didn't "go there." He couldn't. That's not who he is.
This was a prelude, as it turned out, to the vapid attacks and scorched earth, absolutist tactics created by Republicans in the years to quickly come, such as the Tea Party's temper tantrum, Scott Walker's legislative muting of collecting bargaining in Act 10, and of course, ex-'s attacks on "political correctness," otherwise known as tact and civility, that appeared in 2016.
Gableman got there first. Once on the court, he also refused to recuse himself when confronted with obvious conflicts of interest, for which Clarence Thomas has also branded himself on the U.S. Supreme Court (though he isn't the first who's had this issue; the liberal William O. Douglas was also accused of it, and not without justification.).
Butler went back to his private practice. He became an adjunct law professor at UW-Madison. Then, with a new president, Obama, in 2009, he was nominated to a federal district court judgeship for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Political forces undermined him there, too. Corporate influences surged to object as his nomination was considered. While on the state Supreme Court, Butler had written two decisions which the business sector found unacceptable: holding manufacturers responsible for the making of lead paint; and lifting restrictions on compensation for litigation victims. For those two, he was considered "too far left" to be accepted onto the federal bench. (Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
But that's Louis in a nutshell. He hasn't, and will never, bend for personal expediency. Good is good and bad is bad, and he has always been there to underscore the difference. On the Lawrence campus, he was one of those who tied up the administration building in the spring of 1972, demanding more attention to the needs of Black students. Someone with a view toward a possible future might have played that a different way, maybe standing astride and cheering people on without getting on camera. Not Louis; he stood strong and would be happy to tell you why. The Black students won significant advancements. Maybe that's what prevented him, in the end, from accomplishing a more "official" set of titles for his career; he didn't compromise himself.
Practically from the start of his presidency, Obama had been plagued with backlogs of his nominations for a variety of federal positions. A deal needed to be cut to get most of them moving along the required path, and Butler's nomination fell victim to the kind of political compromise that a divided Congress sometimes needs to enact. After a second discussion, he was frozen, and that spelled doom.
Butler finished his career as a teacher who spread his influence among both younger legal candidates and those who had accomplished their goals, going to the National Judicial College in Reno, NV to instruct people who had already been practicing judgeships. Adding to that, he also:
- was the first public defender in state history to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court (1988);
- argued before the state Supreme Court more than 20 times;
- was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Lawrence in 2007.
Not a bad career, that. Yes, he came up short about two things he badly wanted, but both times, he has pivoted and made plenty of good with what was left. He has been an instructor in his craft, but his life has instructed others, too.
We were both Government majors at Lawrence, but really started to know each other in a hospital recovery room in late 1969, he for his knee and I for my big toe. We laugh about that whenever we see each other. As we turn the corner toward life's last horizon, I am glad and proud to call this groundbreaking jurist my friend. And, here, I congratulate him not only for what he's done, but for who he has always been.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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