Marquette Law Review Volume 85 Article 8 Issue 1 Fall 2001 Baseball, Apple Pie and Judicial Elections: An Analysis of the 1967 Wisconsin Supreme Court Race Michael Koehler Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr Part of the Law Commons Repository Citation Michael Koehler, Baseball, Apple Pie and Judicial Elections: An Analysis of the 1967 Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, 85 Marq. L. Rev. 223 (2001). Available at: http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/mulr/vol85/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Marquette Law Review by an authorized administrator of Marquette Law Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. BASEBALL, APPLE PIE AND JUDICIAL ELECTIONS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE 1967 WISCONSIN SUPREME COURT RACE MICHAEL KOEHLER1 "Certain [state] constitutions make the members of courts elected and submit them to frequent re-elections. I dare to predict that sooner or later these innovations will have dire results ....2 I. INTRODUCTION One interesting, some would say fatal, consequence of Wisconsin's system of an elected judiciary is that judges who render decisions can be replaced by the will of the people who tend to judge the judiciary on the basis of a single controversial decision. A case in point is the effect that Wisconsin v. Milwaukee Braves, Inc.3 had on the 1967 Wisconsin Supreme Court election between George R. Currie and Robert W. Hansen. In 1965, Milwaukee's major league baseball team, the Milwaukee Braves, moved to Atlanta, Georgia, over the objection of nearly everyone in Milwaukee and Wisconsin.4 Wisconsin's efforts to keep the Braves in Milwaukee proved fruitless, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court in a 4-3 decision held that the Braves transfer to Atlanta had not violated Wisconsin's antitrust statutes Joining the majority in that case was George Currie, the highly respected chief justice of the Wisconsin 1.