Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Wisconsin state bar discourages free speech

I was just thinking that I haven’t written a judge-bashing blog post in quite a while.  And then, out of the blue, I got a call from criminal defense lawyer and free speech advocate Terry W. Rose, telling me about an outrageous opinion piece in the November issue of Wisconsin’s state bar magazine.  This piece, subtitled “never provide information in blog posts . . . that criticizes judges,” is especially alarming because it was written by a lawyer and, worse yet, the vice chair of our state bar professional ethics committee.  Essentially, the piece makes two claims.  Its first claim pertains to lawyers discussing cases in which they are, or have been, involved as counsel.  (I’ve already written about that tandem of bizarre ethics rules in an earlier blog post and in a forthcoming law review article.)  And its second claim — the claim I want to address in this post — is that ethics rules 20:8.2 and 20:8.4(c) “make it very clear that a lawyer may not criticize a judge in most circumstances and doing so could result in significant sanctions.”

Sunday, December 7, 2014

How Wisconsin saved the Big Ten (and more college football madness)

By losing 59-0 to Ohio State, the Badgers made the Buckeyes look so good that “the committee” leapfrogged them over TCU and into college football’s field of four “playoff” teams.  Meanwhile, both TCU and Baylor — the so-called “co-champs” of the Big 12 — got left out of college football’s “little dance.”  In some sense this is unjust, given that the Big 12 is a stronger conference than both the Big 10 and the ACC.  But in addition to blaming Wisconsin, the two Texas teams from the Big 12 can also blame their own conference.