A drive to succeed and a passion for fairness take alumnus to the state's highest court
By Steven Blodgett
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2005
On August 25, 2004, Louis B. Butler, Jr., ’73, took the oath of office
to become the newest justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Appointed by
Governor Jim Doyle to fill the position left vacant by Justice Diane Sykes’ acceptance
of a seat on the United States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, he will
serve until July 31, 2008, when he will have to run for reelection to a new
ten-year term.
A government major at Lawrence, Justice Butler received the J.D. from the
University of Wisconsin Law School and served as an assistant Wisconsin State
Public Defender in both the appellate and trial divisions. He was a Milwaukee
Municipal Court judge from 1992 to 2002 and Milwaukee County Circuit Court
judge from 2002 until his appointment to the high court. A former adjunct
assistant professor at Marquette University Law School, he is a permanent
member of the faculty of the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada, where
judges from across the nation pursue continuing education. His wife, Irene,
and he have two daughters, Jessica and Erica, who attend UW–Madison.
He also has an older stepson, Harry, and a one-year-old granddaughter.
In January, Justice Butler came to Appleton to speak to an audience of high
school students at an Appleton North High School commemoration of Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. Afterwards, he stopped by campus to talk
with Director of Public Affairs Steve Blodgett about his appointment, career,
and experiences at Lawrence.
In over 25 years as a lawyer and jurist, you’ve achieved a remarkable
number of “firsts,” among them, being the first public defender
from the State of Wisconsin to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court
and, now, the first African-American Wisconsin Supreme Court justice. To
what do you attribute your success?
I’ve always felt that I had support from my parents and my family to
do well. Whatever I chose to do in life — it didn’t really matter,
I could have been a garbage man and that would have been fine — I was
encouraged to do the best I possibly could. Getting a good education was
certainly helpful, whether in high school at South Shore in Chicago or coming
to Lawrence. I think the one internal trait that I brought was a degree of
stubbornness and determination. I am the kind of person that gets spurred
on by someone telling me that I can’t do something or telling me I’m
second best. That means that I am going to try all the harder to get it done.
The other thing that drives me is a sense of fairness. I have this very
strong sense of right and wrong and tend to see the world in that light.
I believe
you have a responsibility to fight for what is right and to oppose that
which you consider to be wrong.
I understand that your sense of fairness and outrage at injustice began
to show itself at a rather young age.
When I was a sophomore in high school, my brother and I and five friends
had gone to a beach on the south side of Chicago. I must admit that I
was oblivious
at the time to many of the segregated parts of the city and didn’t know
that Rainbow Beach was supposedly off limits to me. We entered the beach and
this group of young people came over and started hassling us. Out of the blue,
one man said, “You say anything to me, ‘boy?’” to one
of us, and then another one said to me, “Did you say anything to me, ‘nigger
boy?’” I was ready to fight. I was completely outraged.
My brother and our friends saw that what seemed like the whole beach was
beginning to surround us, and they literally snatched me up and carried me
off. We all
hopped on a bus together and, after a few blocks, I was determined to go
back and set things straight. One of the police officers from school recognized
me when I got off the bus and stopped to chat. He calmed me down and said, “Look,
you don’t have to go back. If you go back, you will be right in the middle
of this mess. You’ve got to figure out another way.”
That was just one example, out of many that we had growing up, of racism
that was directed personally at us. I was offended by it but also learned
to address
it in a more productive way.
The oldest of five children in your family, you grew up in the Park Manor
neighborhood of Chicago’s south side, graduating from South Shore
High School in 1969. By all accounts, that was a pretty rough neighborhood
during a turbulent time.
How do you think that upbringing shaped the choices you have made throughout
your life and career?
There was a huge gang problem on the south side, and there were six or
seven gangs in our neighborhood — the Devil’s Disciples, the Black Stone
Rangers, the 75th Street Syndicate, and others. A number of us on our block got
together and said, “We are going to stick together; we’re not joining
any gangs.” We committed to it among ourselves and decided that anything
else was too dangerous.
I think every young person in the neighborhood knew who the bad people
were. Yet we felt that nobody was doing anything to protect us. That helped
to
form my direction. I didn’t necessarily go to law school just to be a prosecutor — I
knew I wanted to do something political down the road — but that was one
of my motivations for becoming a lawyer. I thought, “I’ll become
a prosecutor, and I’ll put the bad guys away.” When I graduated from
law school, I couldn’t get a prosecutor to hire me, so I ended up on the
other side, as a public defender.
In your swearing-in speech, you said, “I look forward to the day when we
no longer have to acknowledge firsts.” Is there a burden to be
borne by being the first African-American justice on the court or do
you see it more as
an opportunity to blaze a trail and, perhaps, serve as a role model?
I see it probably more on the opportunity side. I don’t want to shy away
from the concept of burden — it is a burden to be on the Supreme Court,
for anyone. I don’t care who you are; you are making decisions that impact
the lives of every citizen of this state. One word can have a huge meaning in
terms of how a decision comes out. One word. When you look at it from that perspective,
it is an awesome responsibility, and there is a lot one has to do. I don’t
take that lightly.
Having said that, I think it is a golden opportunity for me to be visible
to young African Americans and to have the public see me as a role model.
When
I was a judge in Milwaukee, I recall being asked to judge a gumbo contest
with two other judges. There were four or five black youngsters who came
and sat
at
the edge of the stage, right at our feet. They were staring up at us,
and we looked at them and asked, “Is there something wrong?” I’ll
never forget the look on one young man’s face who said, “We’ve
never seen a black judge before.” That told me that my responsibility to
the community was more than wearing a robe and sitting on a bench and making
decisions. I had to be a role model, I had to be out there for people to see,
if for no other reason than so a young person can look up at me and say, “I
can do that.”
In the submission of your candidacy for the high court appointment,
you wrote that your goal as a jurist “is to bring the same passion for equal justice
that Thurgood Marshall did, along with the ability to build consensus as William
Brennan did.” Could you elaborate?
I always try to think in terms of what’s right, what’s just. But
once you get to that determination, you have to realize that you are only one
of seven justices. My vote counts no more, no less, than any other justice on
that court. If I cannot persuade three other people to join me in my position,
I do not have a majority. You have to be willing to work with the other justices,
to see their point of view, and to reach a consensus. I just marvel at the way
William Brennan was able to do that when he was on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Thurgood Marshall’s passion for justice is legendary. The things that he
fought for in his life and stood for mean a lot to me. I marvel at how hard he
strove for justice throughout his entire career and was unwavering in trying
to do that which he thought was right.
If I could mold myself as a justice, I’d want to be a cross between those
two individuals.
Does that quote suggest that you consider yourself to be a judicial activist
in the Warren Court tradition?
No. In fact, judicial activism scares me. When I ran for the state
supreme court in 2000, I ran against judicial activism and as a judicial
conservative.
I believe
that the law is designed to move slowly for a reason. You want to make
sure that what you are doing is right. You have to be careful that
what you do
doesn’t
impact negatively on the rest of society. It scares me when judges come up with
new doctrines and take them and run with them, because I understand the raw power
that we in the judiciary have.
That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t favor change when change
is called for. If it is warranted, I believe that you have a responsibility to
find the best way to implement it without causing any additional problems. In
that regard, I do not consider myself to be a strict constructionist. Strict
constructionists scare me just as much, because they often refuse to acknowledge
change.
When the U.S. Constitution was drafted, there were no airplanes, there
was no such thing as a computer, and there was no Internet. The entire
society
was different.
As an African American, I would have been considered three-fifths of
a person. Society has evolved, and the country has evolved. In applying
the
Constitution,
you need to look at where things have evolved and adapt accordingly.
But I still believe you don’t want to move quickly in any one direction. That makes
me nervous.
How did your Lawrence education prepare you for a legal career or just
for life in general?
One of the things that was really helpful to me was learning to think
in outline form — which I got from [Professor Emeritus of Government] Chong-Do Hah,
because that is how he thinks. It helps to think like that when you are trying
to fashion arguments to represent clients. That had more to do with shaping my
thinking as a lawyer than going to law school did.
I think that the many friendships I made on campus, both with faculty
and other students, helped mold my personality and my character.
Being around
a lot of
intelligent people forced you to be at your best at all times. It’s just
like going into the conference room in the state supreme court — if I walk
in unprepared, nobody’s listening to me. Well, it was the same way in class — you
had to be ready.
I also found Lawrence to be a place where you learned to communicate,
how to convince people that there were different ways of looking
at things. I remember
we used to have a ton of arguments in the coffee shop or down in
the poolroom
in the Union about political or social issues. We also argued quite
a bit outside of class about what we had learned that day from this
or
that professor.
I
thought that was healthy, to be able to discuss things in a way in
which you were trying
to understand each other. Lawrence provided that atmosphere.
You’ve often said that President John F. Kennedy’s call to service
in his 1961 inaugural speech inspired you greatly. Now that you
have the opportunity to share with young adults your own enthusiasm for public
service, what do you
tell them that may resonate in a similarly powerful way?
Well, I don’t know if I could ever say anything quite the way that John
Kennedy did — that was a powerful speech. What I try to do is get the message
out to “set your goals high.” I don’t care what you want to
do — it really doesn’t matter — but whatever your goal is,
set it way up there. I have this interesting theory. I think that, whatever your
goal is in life, you will always fall just short. If you set your goals high
and fall short, you still will have succeeded. If you set them too low and fail,
you’ve accomplished little.
I tell young adults that, once you’ve set your goal, then you have to think
in terms of what it takes to achieve it. Wanting something is not the same thing
as achieving it. I say this to my own kids all the time — don’t just
want something, figure out how you can obtain it. And if your plan may happen
to fail, that’s okay. I’ve run for judicial positions twice before
and lost. I tell them that it is okay to have tried and failed; the real failure
is in not trying at all.