- Today we are pleased to introduce Joseph A Ranney as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum's History Sandwiched In lecture series. The opinions expressed today are those of the presenter and are not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the museum's employees. JA is a lawyer with DeWitt Ross & Stevens SC in Madison. His practice consists mainly of business, intellectual property, and civil rights litigation. He's also an adjunct professor of legal history at Marquette Law School in Milwaukee and is the Adrian Schoone Fellow for the study of Wisconsin legal institutions at the law school. He has written several books and articles on legal history and other legal topics, including "Trusting Nothing to Providence: "A History of Wisconsin's Legal System," "In the Wake of Slavery: Civil War, Civil Rights, and the Reconstruction of Southern Law," and "Wisconsin and the Shaping of American Law." Here today to discuss how state laws have shaped American history, please join me in welcoming JA Ranney.  [applause]  - Thank you, Katie, and I want to thank everybody for coming out today. So you may be wondering, how did this book come about? Well, when I first became a lawyer, more years ago than I care to think about, when you're a young lawyer, you spend a lot of your time in law libraries and in the back rooms of the law firms looking at case law and doing legal research. As I did that, I had occasion to look at a number of ancient volumes of the Wisconsin Supreme Court reports. And when I read those, I discovered kind of a lost world. Cases involving logging rights up north, cases involving buggy accidents and other things from an era that's long past. And I really came to ask myself, well, what was life like then? How did these legal issues come about, and how do they affect the legal system under which we all lead our lives today? So one thing led to another, and ultimately I wrote the book that Katie showed you, "Wisconsin and the Shaping of American Law," which is what I want to talk about today. I wrote the book to answer several what I consider important questions involving Wisconsin history and particularly Wisconsin's legal history. The first thing that's of interest to me is this: if you are at all interested in legal history or legal affairs generally, the vast majority of literature and publicity that's available concerns Congress and the federal courts. Every day when we open up the newspaper, we see something about the Supreme Court or we see what antics are going on in Congress today, but you see very little about what's going on in state government, and particularly with our State Supreme Court. That's true in other states as well. And that's a shame because really your daily lives are governed much more by state law than they are by federal law. Under the US Constitution, the federal government and federal courts have very limited powers to shape the law, but things like everything from tort law, if you get in an accident what law is going to apply, to trusts and estate laws, when you die what law says who your property is going to go to, that's all governed by state law. So I asked myself, would it be appropriate to cast more of an eye on state law than has been done here before? Another thing, and I became particularly aware of this as I was writing the book, is are there patterns in state and regional legal development. What, in fact, are the regions of the country? If you look at the map at the bottom, you'll see you can define the different regions of the United States in very non-traditional ways. You can divide the United States into four or five regions or multiple regions, as are shown on the map here. I particularly have taken some time to look at New England law and southern law and other contexts, and I've asked myself what is unique about Wisconsin, what is unique about Midwestern law, but, conversely, what have we done to shape law in other regions. And a closely associated question is you can look at Wisconsin law sort of using the metaphor of a double lens. On the one ha -  [inaudible]  - Pardon? Prohibiting teaching of classes in schools in anything other than the English language. That law was overturned the following year in 1890, but the assimilation process continued. Ultimately, Germans in Wisconsin rose to positions of full political equality and power, but they did so largely by assimilating to speaking English in the schools and following what the Yankees viewed as appropriate values. The book, chapter seven of the book talks about the history of environmental law in Wisconsin. It talks about, basically, the prevailing ethic of the 19th century that nature was unlimited, nature's resources were unlimited. There essentially were no limits on economic exploitation of natural resources in Wisconsin up until the 1890s. By the 1890s, our northern white pine forests were getting logged out, people were starting to realize finally, oh, you know, these forests aren't going to be around much longer. So the modern environmental movement started at the turn of the 20th century. The progressives, under Bob La Follette in 1903, passed a law called the Forestry Law, providing for conservation. That became very controversial. It was struck down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court about 10 years later on the grounds that the state had no business being involved and spending tax dollars on forest preservation. That was not a public purpose. The owners then turned out of office the court justice who had written that decision, and they passed a constitutional amendment saying forest preservation is an important goal and it is constitutional. So Wisconsin came kind of late to the game on conservation, as did most other American states, but that was a major matter of concern during the progressive era. The book talks about how the seeds, no pun intended, of modern environmental law were planted during the progressive era. Chapter eight talks in detail about the progressive era. One of the questions I asked myself when I wrote the book is, well, we all read in school about how the progressive era was the golden era for Wisconsin. We were leaders of the nation under Fighting Bob La Follette. And I said, well, is that really true? And I came to the conclusion at the end of the day it's not entirely true but it's mostly true. The progressive movement didn't begin with Bob La Follette. Things like direct primaries, tax reform, workplace safety laws had started a couple of decades before La Follette, but if you look at the total mass of laws passed during the progressive era, it's an incredible variety of reforms. I came to the conclusion Wisconsin truly was the preeminent state in the nation in enacting progressive reforms. Many other states fought battles over progressive laws, but Wisconsin, I think it's fair to say, was always a little bit ahead. The book also talks about the progressive era and the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It talks in particular about John Winslow, and I'll talk more about him in a few minutes, and I'll try to explain to you why I think he, as much as Bob La Follette, is responsible for the progressive tradition in Wisconsin. Chapter nine talks about kind of the second progressive era that happened during the New Deal in the 1930s. And it talks about the rise of labor law in Wisconsin. During the New Deal, as during the progressive era, there was once again a sense of great economic crisis. During the New Deal, Wisconsin was led by Governor Phil La Follette, Fighting Bob's son. So you had two different La Follettes, two different progressive eras. There were many interesting legal issues that came up during the New Deal, and the book talks about how Wisconsin tried to solve those and once again passed some reform measures such as the state's first unemployment compensation law that served as national examples. Once again, Wisconsin's truly set an example for other states across the country. Toward the end of the book we get into the last half of the 20th century. Chapter 10 goes back and talks more about law and culture. It talks about the modern civil rights movement in Wisconsin. I t