Civility In The Chambers
by digby
This story of the dysfunctional Wisconsin Supreme Court is pretty amazing:
As the deeply divided state Supreme Court wrestled over whether to force one member off criminal cases last year, Justice David Prosser exploded at Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson behind closed doors, calling her a "bitch" and threatening to "destroy" her.
The incident, revealed in interviews as well as e-mails between justices, shows fractures on the court run even deeper than what has been revealed in public sniping in recent years. Problems got so bad that justices on both sides described the court as dysfunctional, and Prosser and others suggested bringing in a third party for help, e-mails show.
Prosser acknowledged the incident recently and said he thought it was becoming public now in an attempt to hurt him politically. Prosser faces Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 election.
He said the outburst came after Abrahamson took steps to undermine him politically and to embarrass him and other court conservatives.
"In the context of this, I said, 'You are a total bitch,' " Prosser said.
"I probably overreacted, but I think it was entirely warranted. . . . They (Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley) are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements. This is bullying and abuse of very, very long standing."
Read the whole thing. It's much more than just a typical case of a male elite hurling sexist insults, although that does figure prominently in this recent dust-up. And obviously it features a group of very difficult people who don't observe much of what we'd normally think of as courtesy on a high court.
But it's more than that. I don't know what cases these people are arguing over, but if it's the kind of cases that the Supreme Court of California or the United States argue over, it's more than a matter of personalities. We have sharply different worldviews, philosophies and ideologies at work in our public life in this country. In this case it may be that they have unpleasant personalities on all sides arguing them out (and I'm sure that the fact that these are elected offices in Wisconsin has something to do with it) but there is a serious, civic argument happening. Certainly the action in the political realm in Wisconsin in recent days should have shown that if nothing else.
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