State Bar of Wisconsin

Wisconsin's Legal History

Wisconsin's legal history is interesting and colorful, but generally unknown to the legal community or to the general public. This collection of articles explains the important role that the legal profession has played in the state's development over the past 150 years.

Chief Justice John B. Winslow made the first attempt to write a comprehensive legal history of Wisconsin in his book, The Story of a Great Court (1912). The book has long been out of print, and it carries the story of the Wisconsin Supreme Court only up to 1880. Madison attorney Joseph A. Ranney, who authored many of the articles in this collection, has worked to revive an interest in Wisconsin's legal history. Anyone seriously interested in Wisconsin's legal history should read Ranney's recent work, Trusting Nothing to Providence: History of Wisconsin's Legal System.

• Pioneers in the Law: The First 150 Women: Between 1879 and 1943, 150 women pioneered the inclusion of their sex into the legal world. In 1998 the State Bar of Wisconsin honored Wisconsin’s first 150 women lawyers at a event attended by more than 700 people In addition, it published biographies and produced a videotape commemorating their lives.
  

• The Making of the Wisconsin Constitution: Wisconsin is one of a very few states still using its original constitution; in fact, Wisconsin has the oldest state constitution outside of New England. The constitution's birth, however, was difficult.
  

• Molders and Shapers of Wisconsin Law: Chief Justices Edward G. Ryan and Luther S. Dixon: To what extent is the law shaped by impersonal institutions and social forces, and to what extent by the personalities and beliefs of great lawyers and judges?
  

• Imperia in Imperiis: Law and Railroads in Wisconsin, 1847-1910: Railroads had as large an impact on Wisconsin law, especially in administrative and tort law, as they did on other aspects of Wisconsin life in the late 19th century.
  

• A Brief History of Wisconsin's Death Penalty: Wisconsin law has been without the death penalty for 140 years, maintaining this tradition longer than any other state in the nation.
  

• The Limitations of Buoyant Opportunism: Law and the Wisconsin Lumber Industry, 1840-1930: During the heyday of Wisconsin's lumber years, about 25 percent of the state's nonagricultural work force was employed in lumber and lumber-related industries-far more than any other industry.
  

• Practicing Law in 19th Century Wisconsin: The dramatic changes that have taken place in Wisconsin's economic, political and social life since Wisconsin first became a distinct political entity in 1836 have inevitably triggered corresponding changes in the nature of legal practice in the state.
  

• Law and the Progressive Era, Part 1: The Good Government Movement in Wisconsin, 1891-1921: Wisconsin is said to have enjoyed its golden age during Robert LaFollette's tenure as governor (1901-06) and U.S. senator (1906-25). More changes were made in Wisconsin's laws, with a greater impact on the state's life, during this period than at any other time in the state's history.
  

• Law and the Progressive Era, Part 2: The Transformation of Wisconsin's Tax System, 1897-1925: "Taxes," said Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "are what we pay for a civilized society." Both the amount of taxes levied and the ways in which they are levied say much about the nature of the society that imposes them. Major changes in a society often are accompanied by major changes in its tax system. Wisconsin is no exception to this rule.
  

• Law and the Progressive Era, Part 3: Reforming the Workplace: At the turn of the 20th century, a movement took place to make the new working conditions that Wisconsin's age of industrialization had created more tolerable for Wisconsin workers. The Progressives are generally given credit for the many advances that were made in Wisconsin's working conditions during this time.
  

• Aliens and "Real Americans": Law and Ethnic Assimilation in Wisconsin 1846-1920: Wisconsin's first settlers were mainly Yankees from New York and New England; they dominated the state's politics for most of the 19th century. But starting in the 1840s large numbers of European immigrants, primarily Germans and Norwegians, began settling in Wisconsin. The immigrants' numbers increased rapidly throughout the next 75 years, and as a result Wisconsin became - and remains - one of the most heavily ethnic American states.
  

• Wisconsin Law in the Age of Institutions: Chief Justices Winslow and Rosenberg: Two of Wisconsin's great chief justices of the 20th century, John B. Winslow (1851-1920) and Marvin B. Rosenberry (1868-1958), played an important role in adapting Wisconsin law to the age of institutions.
  

• The Rise of Labor and Wisconsin's "Little New Deal": During the 1920s and 1930s, the state Legislature and the Wisconsin Supreme Court created much of Wisconsin's modern labor law, culminating in the adoption of a comprehensive labor code and the nation's first unemployment compensation law. The struggle over what rights unions should have was renewed in the late 1930s. During the 1930s the Legislature also enacted laws that collectively constituted a "little New Deal," generating as much legal controversy at the state level as the federal New Deal did nationally.
  

• Looking Further Than the Skin: A History of Wisconsin Civil Rights Law: Even though Wisconsin has always had a much lower percentage of black citizens than the national average, race relations have played a critical role in shaping the state's self-image throughout its history.
  

• The History of Wisconsin's Women's Rights Law, Part 1: Wisconsin Women and the Law, 1846-1920: The American legal system's view of women, and the rights that it has accorded to them, have changed fitfully over the years. Unlike other historically disadvantaged groups, there has not been a single, easily defined movement for women's legal rights.
  

• The History of Wisconsin's Women's Rights Law, Part 2: Wisconsin Women and the Law Since 1920: Huge technological and economic changes in the last half of the century, combined with the ascendance of individual rights in legal and social thought in the 1960s and 1970s, brought new legal changes for women that were at least as far-reaching as the changes before 1920.
  

• Practicing Law in 20th Century Wisconsin, Part 1: The Courts and the Bar Grapple with Growth: The modern history of the Wisconsin bar consists largely of how it has responded to the problems and opportunities created by growth, including the debate over bar integration since the 1930s and the reorganization of the court system in the 1950s and 1970s to meet ever-increasing caseloads.
  

• Practicing Law in 20th Century Wisconsin, Part 2: Continuity and Change in Everyday Legal Life: The dramatic growth of the state and the legal community in the 20th century can be felt by attorneys in their everyday legal lives. Its effects include the overhaul of Wisconsin's civil procedure, the shift to legal "specialists," new legal fields, more medium and large firms, the wave of baby boomers to the profession and the influx of women lawyers, among others.