The David Chokehold Prosser Law Library Gets Major Upgrade

Another great injustice has been corrected by the new and improved Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Wisconsin state law library is not named after the state's first woman attorney, Lavinia Goodell. From 2016 until now, the law library was inappropriately named after the infamous former Justice, David Prosser. Predictably, the name change caused faux outrage among the current and past fascist members of the court:

There was no apparent opposition within the court to honoring Goodell, but there was not unanimous support for removing Prosser's name from the law library. "There are many ways to honor Lavinia Goodell, which is entirely appropriate, without dishonoring a lifelong public servant like Justice David Prosser," Chief Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday.

As for Prosser himself, he was less outwardly outraged, but did prove that he was the same old liar he has always been:

"I was a person, for 18 years, who probably used the library … as much as anyone, and more than a lot of people," Prosser said, adding that he has continued to support the library financially since his retirement. When the library was named for Prosser, then-Chief Justice Patience Roggensack said, "no justice has been more dedicated to the research that happens in the law library than Justice Prosser."

Those claims of being a patron of the library sure as hell weren't true in 2011, when Prosser issued a legal ruling regarding Act 10 and open meeting laws, without "apparent deliberation or research of the laws. Prosser must be really seething that "his" law library was named after a woman, given his long history of misogyny. In 2010, Prosser got in trouble for threatening then Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson:

The Feb. 10, 2010, incident occurred as the court privately discussed a request to remove Justice Michael Gableman from a criminal case. "In a fit of temper, you were screaming at the chief; calling her a 'bitch,' threatening her with '. . . I will destroy you'; and describing the means of destruction as a war against her 'and it won't be a ground war,' " [Justice Ann Walsh} Bradley wrote in a Feb. 18, 2010, e-mail to Prosser and others.

But there's more. There's always more. I would be grossly remiss if I did not include the incident in which Prosser assaulted Justice Ann Walsh Bradley and put her in a chokehold:

It all started when the story was finally brought out that Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused her fellow Justice David Prosser of choking her. What earned her his wrath and alleged attempt of dispensing corporeal-bordering-on-capital punishment was telling him to leave her chambers.

For any of these examples, Prosser should not have even been allowed to stay on the Court, much less be honored by naming a building after him. The significance of what the liberal justices were doing was not lost on them either:

"Lavinia Goodell was a pioneer for Wisconsin women and the legal profession," said Justice Jill Karofsky in a statement. "She never backed down from this critical fight, which paved the way for so many women in our state who have proudly served as lawyers, judges, and justices." When people enter the library, Protasiewicz said in a statement, "they need to know they are somewhere named after a leader who inspired others to do good and do what is right."

Every time that SCOWIS corrects another wrong, it's like another breath of fresh air blowing across the state.