Responding to last week’s post on “Judgments from our Past,” Bill Tyroler kindly highlighted a pair of cases that are bound to interest many readers.  His comments are quoted below.

“1. Krueger v. State, 171 Wis. 566, 177 N.W. 917 (1920). Decision is accessible here: https://www.plainsite.org/opinions/2q7qipgdr/krueger-v-state/.

Stems from a shoot-out on a farm in 1918, flavor of which is captured by this contemporary account in the Neillsville Times:

ONE KILLED, OTHERS WOUNDED IN FIGHT WITH SLACKERS
Notorious Krueger Family Shoot to Kill in Resisting Arrest
Draft Evaders Barricade Themselves in Their Home Near Withee and Kill One Man. Mother and One Son Under Arrest But Other Boy Escapes. Battle Held Saturday Nigh

(https://www.wiclarkcountyhistory.org/5data/119/119816.htm).

It was a chaotic affair altogether, not just the violent event itself (400 shots fired, two killed at the scene, 1 killed later trying to evade capture; but also the ensuing trial (during closing argument, counsel described a witness as “that wretched-faced Jew bartender from LaCrosse”!). One Krueger was acquitted and two others were convicted, the latter being affirmed on appeal. They later received a governor’s commutation of sentence.

The event generated not one but two books: Kay Scholtz, “The Wisconsin Krueger Family Tragedy: 16 years of Letters from Prison” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8392938387); and, Jerry Buss, “A War of Their Own” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2450158903). That both books are relatively recent (1998 and 2013) suggests enduring interest in the event which, as an aside, occurred in the postage-stamp sized village home to Bruce Beilfuss. To bolster that point, the Marathon County Historical Society had a presentation about the shoot-out a mere two years ago (https://business.wausauchamber.com/community-events/Details/marathon-county-historical-society-presents-history-speaks-the-krueger-shootout-1061874?sourceTypeId=Website). And, more recently still, it was made part of a UW course on WWI (https://doughboy.org/defiance-in-the-heartland-resistance-to-hyper-patriots-in-wwi-era-wisconsin/).

2. Bianchi v. State, 169 Wis. 75, 171 N.W. 639 (1919). Posted here: https://librarycollections.law.umn.edu/documents/archive/darrow/Bianchi%20anarchist%20case.pdf.

Arises out of the 1917 police station bombing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_Police_Department_bombing), often referred to as the largest loss of police life pre-9/11. I won’t go into it further because the event remains well-known, thanks in no little part to Dean Strang’s book and, notably, the prominence given it by Thomas Pynchon in his recent “Shadow Ticket.” I’d just note that Clarence Darrow orally argued the case.”

Both decisions filed this week delivered fantasy league points and shook up the standings in the process.  The Affirmed picked up a point for an amicus brief by Meissner Tierney Fisher & Nichols in State v. Andreas W. Rauch Sharak, and the Waivers matched them with a point for an amicus brief by Husch Blackwell in State v. J. D. B.  However, this was not enough to prevent the Gavels of the State Public Defender’s Office from vaulting into first place with five points for a brief and oral argument in State v. J. D. B.

Last year we began a series of posts on intriguing and sometimes exotic century-old cases.  Whether the facts now feel antiquated, the disputes distant, or the reasoning curious—something in these cases summons an earlier age.  Along with matters of marriage and divorce (reserved for a separate post), the court issued rulings on a diverse array of provocative or otherwise fascinating topics for us to sample, including Prohibition, forced confessions, pasteurization, World War I, and baseball on Sundays.[Continue Reading…]

No decisions were filed this week–hence, no change in the standings.

No decisions were filed this week–hence, no change in the standings.

No decisions were filed this week–hence, no change in the standings.

During the past decade, the Wisconsin Supreme Court traversed three distinct eras created by changes in the court’s composition.  The following tables and charts track these shifts and demonstrate how significantly they altered the influence of individual justices.
[Continue Reading…]

No decisions were filed this week–hence, no change in the standings.

The court’s first decision of the 2025-26 term (State v. Michael Joseph Gasper) delivered one point to the Affirmed via an amicus brief by Meissner Tierney Fisher & Nichols.  Click here for the updated standings.

Richard Posner has suggested that one way to perceive the stature or influence of justices is to measure the frequency with which law reviews cite them.^[1]  This approach highlighted the remarkable sway of Shirley Abrahamson as her career drew to a close—and in 2023 it generated an update comparing the number of references for each of her former colleagues still on the bench.  With the passage of three more years and the arrival of new justices, the time has come for another look at how often current members of the court have surfaced in the nation’s law reviews.[Continue Reading…]