CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Some laws are outdated.
When the automobile was brand new, some horses would get spooked by the new Model A. Michigan was the first of several states to pass a law saying that horses had the right of way on public roads. If a horse was spooked, a car driver had to pull over, come to a complete stop, and turn off their vehicle. Only when the horse had passed could the car-driver get out, re-crank their car, and proceed on their way.
Obviously such rules are not practical as Americans adapted to new horseless carriages. State legislatures voted to repeal those laws, and they were signed by their respective governors. That’s how laws get repealed.
Yesterday the Wisconsin state supreme court heard arguments on repealing Wisconsin’s 1849 ban on abortion. That’s not how it’s done. If Wisconsin’s sense of what a woman can or can’t do during an unwanted pregnancy has changed – then repeal the 1849 law. But that hasn’t happened. We still have divided state government, even after the rejiggered maps that were used during this month’s elections.
Our state court system has already embarrassed itself. Dane County judge Dianne Schlipper ruled last year that the state’s abortion ban applies to feticide only – that’s when a third party tries to maliciously terminate a pregnancy. She held that willing abortions are legal. That, obviously, is not what the law says. And a few weeks from now the liberal justices on the state’s highest court will nod their heads in agreement.
And we’ve seen this from our runaway court before. Our state legislature, which is the one and only body that gets to make election law in Wisconsin, has never-ever passed a bill that allows for absentee ballot drop boxes. And yet the state supreme court willed drop boxes into existence for the just-concluded elections.
We’ve crossed the Rubicon. The law doesn’t mean what it says. It means what liberal justices wish it would say. Our highest court is an embarrassment to itself; clowns in black robes.
Chris Conley
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