State Bar of Wisconsin

Wisconsin municipal records and deeds now online

Thousands of Wisconsin's historic municipal records and deeds to state lands now are available online through the Secretary of State's Web site.

"This is the culmination of a several year project to digitize these documents, many of which date back to the founding of our state in 1848," said Secretary of State Doug La Follette. "This is a major step in allowing people everywhere to examine these public documents without traveling to Madison and also protecting the historic records from damage."

The records consist of municipal documents, including town, village, and city incorporation papers, annexations, charter ordinances, corporate boundaries, litigation and related court records, and maps.  The "deeds" series includes land records pertaining to Wisconsin's parks, forests, and wildlife areas, as well as various state-owned buildings and sites.

Visit the Secretary of State's site, which also includes a listing of Wisconsin trademarks and trade names.

A brief history of the brief

The word brief is derived from the Latin adjective brevis, which means "short, low, little, shallow" and dates back to 1292. However, the Online Etymological Dictionary (www.etymonline.com/index.php) indicates that by 1631, the use of the noun derivative breve had evolved to mean "letter of authority," which in turn led to the modern, legal sense of "summary of the facts of a case."

The color of the cover identifies what type of brief it is. An appellant's brief cover is blue, a respondent's is red, and the appellant's reply brief is gray. An amicus curiae brief has a green cover, a guardian ad litem brief is yellow, and an appendix to any brief has a white cover.

The Wisconsin State Law Library's briefs collection currently includes 6,200 bound volumes, with briefs and appendices for all Wisconsin appellate cases for which an opinion has been ordered published or unpublished. Coverage dates back to the beginning of each court: approximately 1839 for the territorial and early state supreme court; 1853 for the reestablished separate supreme court; and 1978 for the court of appeals. Depending on the age of the case, the briefs are available in print, on microfiche, on CD-ROM, and/or on the Web.

For more information about available briefs, visit the State Law Library Web site .

(Source: Wisconsin State Law Library)

Wisconsin Supreme Court accepted its first case in 1853

The first term of the separate Wisconsin Supreme Court commenced on June 1, 1853. When Wisconsin became a state in 1848, the constitutional convention decided to preserve the appellate system that had existed in the territory since 1836. This system brought together the state's circuit court judges once a year in Madison as a "supreme court." In 1852 the state legislature voted to create a separate supreme court, with three members, one of whom would be chief justice.

The court's first case was Winnie v. Nickerson, which involved a $10.40 debt and $14.36 in court costs. The dispute centered on a question of the reliability of an account book.

More information about this case can be found in the State Law Library Feb. 2007 newsletter.

Listen to live supreme court oral arguments

Wisconsin Supreme Court oral arguments heard in the Supreme Court Hearing Room in Madison now are available through live streaming audio.

The audio, available in Windows Media Player format, requires Windows Media Player to listen. Computers must have Netscape version 7 or higher or Internet Explorer version 5.5 or higher.

Recordings of oral arguments also are available for all cases heard from September 1997 to the present.

To see a monthly oral argument schedule or to listen to a live hearing, visit www.wicourts.gov/opinions/supreme.htm.