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    Wisconsin Lawyer
    March 01, 1997

    Wisconsin Lawyer March 1997: Practicing Law in 20th Century Wisconsin, Part 1: E. Harold Hallows

     


    Vol. 70, No. 3, March 1997

    E. Harold Hallows

    In a March 1994 article in this series, Moses M. Strong (1810-1894) was profiled as the archetypal 19th century Wisconsin lawyer. Strong was a politician and entrepreneur as well as a lawyer, and played important roles in founding Wisconsin, its legal culture and the State Bar. Because the 20th century bar is so much larger and more diverse, it is more difficult to identify an archetypal 20th century Wisconsin lawyer. Chief Justice E. Harold Hallows of the Wisconsin Supreme Court comes as close as anyone.

    Hallows was born in Fond du Lac in 1904. He went to college at Marquette University and received his law degree from the University of Chicago in 1930. After graduation, Hallows rapidly rose to prominence in the bar: He established a successful career in private practice in Milwaukee, taught law for many years at Marquette and became a leader of the State Bar.

    When the Judicial Council was formed in 1951, Hallows was appointed one of its first members. He became one of the most forceful advocates of reorganization of Wisconsin's court system. When Hallows was elected president of the State Bar in 1953-54 he made reorganization a top priority and was instrumental in increasing support for court reform among the bar.

    In 1958 Hallows was appointed to the supreme court; he became chief justice in 1968 and served until shortly before his death in 1974. When Hallows joined the court, a tort reform movement advocating the elimination of many common-law immunities and the liberalization of recovery rules was reaching its peak in Wisconsin and many other states. Hallows gained a reputation as a leading supporter of this movement and an authority on tort reform. Hallows also was the author of one of the court's first important environmental law decisions, Just v. Marinette County (1972), in which the court upheld the state's authority to regulate a landowner's rights to alter or modify ecologically fragile property.


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