You could say that Interim Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, Gov. Scott Walker’s handpicked candidate in April’s general election for a 10-year term on the court, had a very bad week.
The watchdog group One Wisconsin Now revealed that as a student at Marquette University, Bradley—then known as Rebecca Grassl—had written a series of hate-filled editorials in which she called gays “degenerates,” argued that those living with HIV/AIDS deserved none of her sympathy, likened abortion to the Holocaust and took aim at feminists and Democrats.
What shocked most was not that Bradley was a conservative—it was the vitriol in her essays.
Bradley apologized for her comments and said that she had changed since then—without pointing to any specific examples of how she has now come to embrace the LGBTQ community, women who have had abortions, feminists and those who simply disagree with her politically.
Bradley didn’t include her incendiary op-eds in her three applications to her three judicial appointments since 2012, although she listed other articles she has published. And we can’t be sure that Walker, whose last year at Marquette overlapped with Bradley’s freshman year, as the Associated Press noted, didn’t know about his Wauwatosa neighbor’s ultra-conservative writings. But he has promoted Bradley at every turn—appointing her to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in December 2012, to the Appeals Court in May 2015 and to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in October 2015. That raises questions about how thoroughly Walker vetted Bradley before promoting her career as judge.
Bradley faces Appeals Court District 4 Presiding Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5 election for a 10-year term on the court.
The Shepherd obtained Bradley’s three applications for her judicial appointments to see how Bradley presented her background so successfully that she obtained an unheard-of three judicial appointments in three years. What we found was an ambitious and unmistakably conservative lawyer who used her connections and selectively disclosed her political affiliations as she rose to power.
Bradley’s campaign didn’t respond the Shepherd’s request to comment for this article.
Bradley Touted Campaign as Reason for Appointment
After Justice Patrick Crooks died in September 2015, good government groups asked Walker not to appoint a declared candidate to fill his seat until his term officially ends in July 2016. Allowing a declared candidate to temporarily take the bench would add to the divisiveness on the court, argued Common Cause in Wisconsin, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Wisconsin Voices. Besides, the interim justice would be seen to have an advantage during the spring election cycle, since he or she could claim to be an incumbent justice. Thus, both Appeals Court Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg and Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Joe Donald—then, like Bradley, declared candidates for the primary election—declined to apply for the interim appointment.
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Rebecca Bradley, on the other hand, seized the moment. Not only did she apply, but in her application she touted her campaign for Supreme Court justice, launched after Crooks announced he’d retire, as a reason why Walker should appoint her.
The application’s final question asks for “any other information you feel would be helpful to your application.” In response, Bradley wrote, “My ability to win a contested primary election in Milwaukee County against two opponents, as well as the general election against a challenger who spent approximately $250,000 in the race, establishes that I can be successful in retaining this seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, should I earn the governor’s appointment.” After detailing her Supreme Court campaign operations already underway, she wrote, “I thoroughly understand the work required to launch and maintain a successful campaign to retain a judicial seat as an incumbent appointee.”
Of course, just months before Bradley applied for the Supreme Court seat, she had applied for a place on the Appeals Court freed up by the death of Judge Ralph Adam Fine.
Bradley highlighted her electoral success in her January 2015 application for the Appeals Court, writing, “I thoroughly understand the work required to launch and maintain a successful campaign to retain a judicial seat as an incumbent appointee.” Those were the words she’d repeat later that year as she sought a Supreme Court appointment. Walker appointed Bradley to the Appeals Court in May 2015.
Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler told the Shepherd that Bradley had a right to seek the appointment, but he questioned Walker’s decision to appoint an interim justice so close to the April election.
“Here we are on the eve of an election and the governor thought it appropriate to appoint someone to replace Justice Crooks right away, right after he passed away, knowing an election was coming up,” Butler said. “But when you look at what’s going on with the United States Supreme Court, where you have a president who is going to be serving until January 2017, and all of the opposition to whoever he nominates to the Supreme Court and not even granting a hearing—I see that as a stark contrast.”
Marquette Law School Associate Professor Edward Fallone said he didn’t think Bradley’s promotion of her campaign in her applications was unusual or out of line, since any governor would want to appoint a justice who could retain the seat in an election.
“I think that’s a factor that governors take into consideration,” Fallone said. “They don’t want to appoint someone who is not going to run hard and end up losing a campaign.”
But Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause in Wisconsin, said Bradley’s appointment was another sign of just how ideological the court has become.
“There are so many people who seem to me to be so much better qualified to be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court than Rebecca Bradley in the sense that there’s more maturity, more sense of impartiality, there’s more experience on the bench,” Heck said. “This seems like kind of a situation where you have someone who we now know was extremely conservative in college and stepped into the legal profession and was almost on a track to rise through the ranks through various judgeships to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”
Right-Wing Federalist Society Ties
In her applications, Bradley also highlighted her prominent roles in the Milwaukee Lawyers Chapter of the Federalist Society, where according to the application she serves on the board of advisors and has held leadership positions in the past.
The Federalist Society is a group of very conservative attorneys, law professors and judges formed in the early 1980s who disagreed with the Supreme Court decisions that gave their blessing to legal abortions, the right to privacy, affirmative action, desegregation, Miranda rights for those under arrest, and a strong federal government. Among its initial leaders were Robert Bork—whose appointment to the high court was torpedoed in 1987 because of his ultra-right-wing views—as well as the recently deceased Antonin Scalia, whom President Reagan appointed to the court in 1986.
The Federalists argue in favor of judicial restraint and against “judicial activism” and “legislating from the bench.” But as Jeffrey Toobin wrote in his book about the Supreme Court, The Nine, “Indeed, they did not believe in judicial restraint, and they represented a new kind of judicial activism themselves.”
Although the Federalist Society began as a fringe group of disaffected conservatives, it gained traction during the Reagan administration and is now firmly in the mainstream of Republican legal circles, showing just how far conservatives have moved to the right.
Bradley’s three applications to her judicial positions highlight her Federalist Society connections and list her leadership positions dating back to 2005, although she told the Shepherd during her 2013 campaign that she joined the group while in law school at UW-Madison in the 1990s.
In addition, Bradley secured letters of recommendation from two legal experts who highlighted her Federalist Society connections—Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler, who wrote on Bradley’s behalf in February 2015 for her appellate court appointment, and Richard Esenberg, president and general counsel of the right-wing advocacy group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which is primarily funded by the uber-conservative Bradley Foundation, which itself is a funder of the Federalist Society.
In 2012, when Bradley was seeking her circuit court appointment, Esenberg wrote, “I fully understand that any governor will be concerned about the political viability of a potential appointee. Rebecca is well respected in the Milwaukee legal community and can expect to receive the strong support of conservatives.”
Public and Private Disclosures
Also to be noted are the views and affiliations that Bradley discloses in public and what she scrubs from the record.
For example, in last week’s Milwaukee Bar Association-sponsored forum with Kloppenburg, Bradley wouldn’t state her favorite and least favorite U.S. Supreme Court decisions, saying that the issues in these cases could come before her as a justice. She did, however, say that her favorite justices were Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—the two most conservative justices on the current high court.
But Bradley was more forthcoming in her judicial applications to be reviewed by Walker. Each time, she wrote that the “best” Supreme Court decision was one authored in 2001 by Clarence Thomas in Good News Club v. Milford Central School, which gave an evangelical Christian group permission to use a school cafeteria for after-school Bible lessons for elementary school students. Her “worst” decision was Kelo v. City of New London in 2005, which permitted local elected officials to use eminent domain to seize private property for a private development.
That said, there are some glaring omissions in Bradley’s applications. Bradley failed to mention her involvement in the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), even though the application asks for the candidate’s partisan or nonpartisan political involvement. According to its website, the RNLA “builds the Republican Party goals and ideals through a nationwide network of supportive lawyers who understand and directly support Republican policy, agendas and candidates.” In addition, these lawyers come to the party’s aid during elections. The group’s website states that it “provides election law training from preeminent election law professionals.” The Republican Party and the RNLA argue that there’s widespread voter fraud, a belief that has been thoroughly debunked, of course, but it’s led to restrictive voting regulations around the country, including Wisconsin’s GOP-backed voter ID law.
At the time of Bradley’s appointment to circuit court in 2012, her online Super Lawyers listing included this partisan affiliation, according to reporting at the time by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Now, all trace of it is gone. The Shepherd contacted the RNLA to verify Bradley’s involvement but hasn’t gotten a response.
Bradley has current connections to the Republican Party. She has used Republican Party resources in her current campaign, an anomaly in this nonpartisan race, and Joint Finance Committee Co-chairs Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and state Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) were scheduled to host a fundraiser for her on March 14, another sign of Bradley’s partisanship.
Bradley is also playing cat and mouse with her involvement in the Wisconsin Forum, a libertarian group that hosted in January Wisconsin Club for Growth head Eric O’Keefe, who is caught up in the John Doe investigation into Scott Walker’s campaign finance improprieties. The Wisconsin Supreme Court shut down the John Doe investigation last summer, although the prosecutors in the case are seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of the Wisconsin high court’s decision. Wisconsin Club for Growth spent $167,000 on Bradley’s behalf in her election in 2013.
Bradley’s campaign website makes no mention of her involvement in the Wisconsin Forum, and neither does the group’s website, but her judicial applications state that she is a “Wisconsin Forum chairman and board member” without listing any dates. The group’s website displays photos of her at a September 2015 event with South African businessman Herman Mashaba. It’s unclear if she attended O’Keefe’s talk on the John Doe investigation in January. The Shepherd contacted the Wisconsin Forum for clarification but hasn’t received a response.
That said, Bradley did include on her application her service on the board of governors of the St. Thomas More Lawyers Society of Wisconsin, a group of Catholic attorneys, as well as her 2006 op-ed advocating for a conscience clause for pharmacists who seek to deny women doctor-prescribed contraceptives, equating birth control with abortion. Her anti-birth control op-ed directed readers to Pro-Life Wisconsin, a “100% pro-life” organization that is advocating for a personhood amendment to give constitutional rights to fertilized eggs and end abortion, most forms of contraception and embryonic stem cell research.
Pro-Life Wisconsin hasn’t endorsed Bradley in this race, but the more mainstream anti-abortion group Wisconsin Right to Life is supporting her campaign for a full term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
