Retiring Justice Ann Walsh Bradley Gets a Celebration

“It’s been a long journey from the Old Swamp Inn to the Rotunda of the State Capitol,” said Ann Walsh Bradley in 1995, just after taking her first oath of office to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

She hadn’t planned to say it. The remark arose spontaneously.

Thirty years later, as her time on the state’s top court comes to a close, Justice Bradley took another swing at mentioning her father’s Richland Center bar.

“It’s been a long journey from the Old Swamp Inn to Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” she told a Capitol Rotunda on Thursday that echoed with applause.

Bradley was the first woman elected to the state’s top court without having first been appointed. She was preceded on the court by Shirley Abrahamson and Janine Geske.

Bradley and her colleagues reflected on her turn to a legal profession that wasn’t always welcoming to women.

“When Ann was first appointed to the Marathon County Circuit Court by Governor Tony Earl in 1985, she had three preschool-aged children at home. On her investiture, she said she would bring a woman’s perspective to the bench,” said longtime friend Christine Bremer Muggli.

“She told us early on how she envisioned her role as a judge: ‘Because the experiences of a woman are different, I will be bringing that socialization process with me. Much like other judges who are hunters or fishers bring their experiences with them. A perspective that until recently, had long been denied expression.‘”

There were just ten women serving as judges in 1985. Now, there are more than 100 across the state. And six out of the seven state Supreme Court Justices are women.

While sharing the stats of her endeavors on the court that were told to her, Ann Walsh Bradley participated in more than 28,000 cases, 2,375 oral arguments and the authorship of nearly 600 written opinions.

But on Thursday, her focus wasn’t on the past. It was on a warning about the rule of law, and the importance of an independent judicial branch.

“Twice recently, in response to threats to an independent judiciary and attacks on judges by people who did not like their decisions, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts reaffirmed the foundational principles of our democracy. He indicated that judges. must be free to decide cases according to the law and the Constitution, without fear of reprisal or personal safety,” she told the crowd.

“And 20 years ago, then-United States Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist — a Wisconsin native, I may add — addressed a similar precarious environment and spoke out forcefully against attempts to bully and intimidate individual judges.”

Justice Bradley’s final day on the court will be July 31. Newly-elected Susan Crawford will take the seat in August.