An Oral History Interview with Angela Bartell
An interview with Angela Bartell by Ed Reisner. The interview occurred on December 1, 2016. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH ANGELA B.
BARTELL FOR DANE COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION
Interviewer: Ed Reisner
Date of Interview: December 1, 2016
Transcribed by: Ann Albert
MR. REISNER: Good morning. It's December 1st.
This is Ed Reisner for the Dane County Bar History and
Memorials Committee. And I'm here this morning to
interview Angela Bartell, an old friend of mine. And
I'm looking forward to hearing what she has to say
about her background and history.
Angela, good morning.
A Good morning, Ed. It's really nice to talk to you
this morning.
Q Well, let's go back to the beginning. I think I
recall that you were a Milwaukee area native?
A That's right. I grew up in Glendale, Wisconsin.
That's my birth home. We lived in the same house
throughout my childhood, and I went to Nicolet High
School, graduating in 1964.
Q All right. You then came to the University of
Wisconsin for your undergraduate?
A Well, actually, I didn't come directly. I had an
interim, a year of travel and growing up and having a
ball.
I became Miss Wisconsin in June of 1964 and took
the next year off from school. It was my gap year. I
guess we didn't call it that then. And I traveled the
state of Wisconsin. I competed in the Miss America
pageant, actually had a disaster with my talent where
my -- I was doing a concerto of "On Wisconsin" in
various classical styles, and the microphone from the
piano to the director's ears in Atlantic City in the
huge hall wasn't working. And so it was not
coordinated because you had to have microphones to
coordinate. That was a disaster. But the experience
was great.
And after that I spent a year traveling the state,
representing the state of Wisconsin at various events.
And the result of that was that I earned both
appearance fees and scholarships which paid for my
education through law school.
Q Oh. Wonderful.
A My dad had died in 1960, and so having that education
paid for was a huge thing for me and for my mother.
Q So we started at the University of Wisconsin actually
together in 1965.
A Right.
Q And they were tumultuous times on the campus.
A Yes. And in looking back on that tumult really puts
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in perspective for me many of the early experiences
that I had. This was a time when young people were
revolting and the older generations were revolted.
And as a young woman in a profession that was not
accustomed and had never experienced the phenomenon of
increasingly large numbers of women lawyers, I ran
into many special barriers and many special hidden
holes to fall into as a young lawyer which had to be
surmounted, and now better understood looking back.
Q Did you enter law school as essentially a senior
undergraduate, or did you finish your undergraduate?
A Yes. I was the beneficiary of a special
now-no-longer-existing early admittance program where
if you could demonstrate by your law board scores and
your academic records that you had a very high
probability of being successful in law school, they
would permit you to enroll after your junior year of
undergraduate and get double credits. You had to
finish your major courses. Then you received credits
for your first year law classes, and thereby cutting
off seven years to six years, three plus three for
law school, which I was fortunate enough to do.
Q What encouraged you to go to law school? Were there
lawyers in your family?
A Not a one. It's kind of a funny story, and it all
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worked out very well. But I met and began dating a
second-year law student, Jeffrey Bartell. And I would
pick him up at the law school, and by sitting in the
back listening to his classes. And I heard Professor
Abrahamson lecture and Professor Hurst and Professor
Campbell before I ever went to law school. And being
the competitive person that I am and knowing other law
couples, I did not want to enter into a marriage where
my husband was a lawyer and I didn't know what he was
talking about. Now, that's not a very weighty reason
to go to law school, but it's -- all honest with you,
that's the reason I went to law school.
Now, it turned out that it fit me like a glove and
was the best choice I ever made, for whatever reasons.
Q In preparation for this interview, I read some of the
articles that were written when you retired from the
bench, and I was struck by one of them that said that
if you weren't a lawyer, perhaps you could have been a
musician?
A Yes. I was a very serious young musician. I started
taking piano when I was three and a half years old. I
have no idea what my mother was thinking, but -- so I
ended up studying piano for about 15 years. And then
I took up the oboe and became first oboist with the
Music for Youth Symphony in Milwaukee, and I gained a
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full scholarship to Northwestern Music School.
In 1964 when I began that year off, I did a great
deal of performing. I was on stage all the time, and
I loved it. But I concluded that I wanted music and
entertaining to be a sidelight and not my main role in
life. I -- rightly or wrongly, I concluded that the
performance was an ephemeral kind of accomplishment,
and you had to keep performing and performing, and
what have you done lately. And I felt that I wanted
something more lasting to make a more lasting
contribution.
So I studied psychology and German in
undergraduate. I spent my junior year abroad in
Germany. So I really only had two undergraduate years
at the UW-Madison. And I came to Madison because I
turned back my scholarship to Northwestern, and I had
the funds from my year as Miss Wisconsin to pay for my
UW-Madison education, which at that time was a huge
bargain.
Q Dirt cheap.
A Dirt cheap.
Q I just got an e-mail from the dean yesterday
explaining to law students that their tuition is
likely to go up $1,000 a year for the next two years.
And it reminded me that I think when I started, my
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tuition was $600 a year total.
A Yes. Yes. I remember tuition in about the same
level.
Q Yeah. So you arrived in the law school in 1968?
A Yes. I was married in August of 1968. Two weeks
later, there I was in Professor Campbell's torts
class.
Q And you already mentioned the scarcity of women. I
think there were a handful in your class and even less
in the classes ahead of you.
A That's exactly right. I no longer remember the exact
numbers, so these are estimates, but I think there
were maybe less than ten, ten or less; fewer in Jeff's
class. He graduated in June of 1968. I started in
the fall of '68. And I think we were in the high
teens.
Q That would be about right.
A So it was starting to increase in the years
immediately after my graduation in 1971. The numbers
ballooned until, oh, maybe ten years later it was half
the class or nearly half the class were women, so --
Q Did that create problems? Was it difficult for you to
find people to study with, to befriend?
A No. Yes and no. Obviously, the women were an
anomaly, something unusual, and I think the fellas
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that were in the class were what the heck is up with
these women, why do they want to go to law school. there was a little bit of we/they, but nothing like
So
sitting in classes.
As you may recall, the law school divided you into
the first half of the alphabet and the second half of
the alphabet, and that was your cohort, which means
that you were with many of the same people in your
classes throughout law school. So that helped break
down the barriers.
But the barriers were real. And I'll relay a
story. And maybe others of the era would remember it
differently, but this is the way I remember it. I was
a very high-achieving law student and ended up
graduating first in my class. So that was the subject
of some discussion among my classmates. And I ran for
editor-in-chief of the Law Review. I had been
articles editor with Walter Dickey and met many close
friends on the Law Review. And when it came time to
elect between the two candidates, I was not elected.
And who knows what the facts were exactly, but I was
told by friends who were at the secret meeting of
election that the concern was that I was a married
woman and would not be able to spend the time at the
Law Review office and so did not become
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editor-in-chief of the Law Review.
Well, that didn't keep me down. I'll tell you
that. And that law school, that Law Review experience
was very valuable for me to edit the articles of
wonderful authors for the Law Review and had the
experience of sitting down with feedback between them
and me. And it was the start of or continuation of my
internalizing goals of a high level of expression and
writing which I needed every day the rest of my law
career, including the 30 years on the bench.
Q Yeah. You've already mentioned three faculty members
just in passing, Shirley Abrahamson, who became a
partner of yours later on.
A Yes.
Q Willard Hurst, a famous historian, and Dick Campbell.
Were those the three faculty members that you would
say you remembered most?
A Oh, Abner Brodie has to go to the top of the list of
the most memorable. I didn't necessarily know him as
well as I know Shirley Abrahamson or Willard Hurst,
who was my neighbor. GEORGE BRAUDEN (ph) was just a
wonderful, open, friendly, highly intelligent leader
at the law school. He became the dean ultimately. So
those were the ones that are standout. And, of
course, Professor Campbell, who is just an icon. I
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can't say that -- well, Ted Finman. Nothing surprised
me more than when I went up to the lectern to ask him
a question and was on an eye level with him, his
piercing black eyes. He was an extremely intelligent
man and very challenging.
But Abner Brodie was the master of the Socratic
method, the Socratic method which was all questions
and challenges from the professor was the traditional
mode of education for new lawyers. I would say it was
declining. Professor Campbell also was a master at
it. But Abner Brodie could cut and quarter you right
in front of class, and you liked him for it. So he
was terribly memorable.
Q Yeah. Well, graduation came, 1971. What was the next
step in your career?
A Well, I had the remarkable good fortune to receive a
clerkship with James E. Doyle, Federal District Judge
of the Western District of Wisconsin. And I actually
had two offers that year. I had an offer from the
Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court to be his
law clerk, Nathan Heffernan, long-term mentor and
friend as well. And one of the hardest things I had
to do as a young woman lawyer was to tell Nat
Heffernan that I would be not taking his offer of
clerkship. And my reason was, I explained to him, was
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that I wanted to be in the practice of law, and I felt
that clerking at the trial level would give me a
vicarious chance to learn at the feet of the best
lawyers to appear in the Federal District Court in the
trial situation and watch fact finding. At that point
I was not planning on being a judge. But that
decision is really seminal to expose me to one of the
icon trial judges in our state's history, James E.
Doyle. Not the governor. The dad.
And at the end of that year of clerkship, when I
began my practice with LaFollette, Sinykin, Anderson &
Abrahamson and experienced other trial judges, I made
an internal goal to try to follow in the footsteps of
my great mentor, Judge Doyle, and become a trial
judge.
Q You mentioned your first legal position after the
clerkship was with the LaFollette law firm.
A Yes.
Q How long were you there?
A I was there five years.
Q And during that time --
A I might point out, barely the minimum required to
qualify to be a circuit court judge. Barely.
Q While you were there, what kind of practice did you
do?
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A It was a general associate's practice. I worked on
many cases with the senior partners at the law firm.
I'll add a little footnote here that Gordon
Sinykin is one of the toughest mentors you'll ever
have in your life, and if you didn't get to the bottom
in your research or write with the most direct and
persuasive style, he'd be all over you. And, you
know, it's the old story, though. The teachers that
were the toughest are the ones who did you the most
good and that you end up feeling closest to. So
Gordon Sinykin was a very, very important teacher for
me. Shirley Abrahamson. Earl Munson. A. Roy
Anderson. These were the senior partners in that
firm, and they were all wonderful mentors for me and
leaders for me.
And I began to attract some of my own clients.
Some were handed down by senior partners, and some of
them I'm still in contact with, my clients from back
then, if you can believe it. I have a good friend,
Barbara Yaffe she was then known as, now Barbara
Marshall, who was a neighbor of mine out in Tucson,
Arizona in the winter. So between my old clients, I
did a lot of real estate on my own coin and a lot of
family law. These were areas of entre.
I will say that the people who mentored me,
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including Judge Doyle and those senior partners I
mentioned, were people who had no doubt that women
would -- could excel in the law. The fact that
Shirley Abrahamson was a partner in that law firm was,
I think, critical to their education and understanding
and, of course, an important role model for me as I
began my career.
Q Did you happen to take Tax from Shirley?
A Yes, I did.
Q So did I.
A Yes, I did.
Q You were about to add something.
A I want to talk about the job search at that time --
Q Yes.
A -- which was a real gauntlet of fire. That's the only
way to explain it.
Now, the people that I was interviewing with
didn't mean to be overbearing or doubtful or
rejecting. These were, you know, fine law firms.
They simply had no experience with women in private
practice. And private practice is a business, and it
depends on your ability to attract clients and to
perform, expand your practice, ultimately to be a
rainmaker. And they had never seen a woman do this in
our town.
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I do remember that Jean Lawton was an associate in
her dad's firm. And Shirley Abrahamson was
extraordinary then, and she is extraordinary now, that
she had a successful practice and combined it with a
professorship at the law school. That's just her.
She's extraordinary.
So that law firm was receptive to young lawyers of
promise, regardless of their gender. But I can tell
you that the rest of the law firms in town were not
convinced, and doubtful. And I interviewed with many
of them. I had one offer. I was the first in my
class. I was an editor of the Law Review. I had
outstanding credentials. I was not shy. There would
be no reason, but for gender.
I was -- the details of it, I guess, aren't
important, but one of the funny anecdotes, at one law
firm I was told that, well, I wouldn't be able to play
basketball at noon with the lawyers, and I probably
wouldn't fit in. And in those days, you could ask
those forbidden questions like are you going to have
children and all of this.
I've left out one person that I do need to talk
about in terms of my fortification to seek this career
in these challenging times, and that was Margo Melli,
Marygold Melli.
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Q I was about to mention her because she tells similar
stories about when she graduated 1952. Now, that's 20
years before you.
A Yeah. Not much had changed.
Q The dean of the law school told her as they were
walking down Bascom Hill,
"Well, you're going to have
a tough time finding a job.
"
A Right.
Q Margo remembered that 50 years later.
A Well, I remember a comment of another editor at the
Law Review, not Walter Dickey, who said,
"You're gonna
make a hell of a legal secretary.
" Fortunately, I'm a
peaceful person.
But Margo Melli -- let me just say that before I
went to law school, I met with Margo because she had a
family, she was raising children and was a leader in
the law school and a pioneer in domestic law, divorce
law, was one of the leaders ultimately of no-fault
divorce in Wisconsin. She was a giant. And so I went
to meet with her, but not on the subject really of law
so much as how do you work your life, how does your
life work for you, what's your experiences. And she
was very reassuring, very supportive that it was
possible to combine family and career. That was the
era when Betty Friedan was writing books like a penny
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in her shoe, which I read voraciously because I knew
where Jeffrey Bartell was going to be 20 years down
the road, but I didn't know where I was going to be.
But I wanted to be someplace important, though. So
Margo was a very supportive figure even before I went
to law school.
Q We're talking about discrimination against young women
lawyers at that time. Did it carry over into -- first
of all, did you get a sense that you were paid less?
A No.
Q You weren't. Well, of course, your firm --
A No, it was my firm, and then I went from my firm to
the county court, not the circuit court, of Dane
County where all judges are paid the same. So while I
experienced overt discrimination, that's the only
thing I can say. And I don't blame anybody. I mean,
I'm not mad about it. But that happened to me.
I also avoided a lot of less obvious forms of
discrimination, certainly in pay. I never had that
ever.
Q Well, five years went by in private practice, and you
said that was the minimum to become a judge. What led
you to become a judge?
A Well, I told Gordon Sinykin when I interviewed for the
job that someday my goal was to be a judge. I think
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he hoped it wouldn't be true. When he was my
presenter at court for my swearing-in ceremony, my
investiture, he made a joke, he said he was tired of
being the bridegroom to the bride because Jim Doyle,
his partner, had gone on the bench, and then Shirley
Abrahamson had gone on the bench a year before I did,
and then me. Of course, he was then still to suffer
yet another loss when Margaret Peggy Vergeront went to
the Court of Appeals from that law firm. So he felt
he was the training ground, and he lost of lot of
lawyers to judicial careers.
Q You were appointed to your first seat on the bench?
A Yes. Yes. So the immediate thing that preceded that
was I will say now my dear friend Archie Simonson who
stuck both feet in his mouth and triggered in that
very active political environment a recall. And the
recall laws then were different than they are now. It
was a one-shot deal, and it made -- a petition had to
be filed, and then anybody could run against him. And
there were six people that ran against Archie.
Q And I was the campaign manager for Dan Moeser, who
finished second.
A Yes. Yes. Dan Moeser, who went on to have a
distinguished career as a judge as well. And, of
course, the victor was Moria Krueger. And I hope
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you're going to interview Moria.
Q I think she may have been already, yes.
A Okay. She has stories to tell.
So we had our first woman judge in Dane County.
And other than Vel Phillips over in Milwaukee, and I
think there was a woman --
Q Anna Blum in Green County, Monroe.
A Oh, really?
Q Yes.
A Okay. I may have forgotten that.
Q She might have been the first.
A There was another woman up north who was a wife who
may have been on the bench.
Q Yeah.
A But it's -- the years have gone by.
Q Yes.
A So Marty Schreiber -- Bill Eich -- we had a two-level
trial court. We had county courts and we had circuit
courts. And there were six county courts and four
circuit courts. Was it Jackman who retired, Judge
William Jackman, leaving an open seat? And Bill Eich,
a fine judge who had been elected county judge, ran
for circuit court and won. And so that left an
opening on the county court. And there was a lot of
interest, and there were other women candidates. And
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Martin Schreiber was, he was my guy, Acting Governor
Martin Schreiber. He was from Milwaukee. And he
stepped into the governorship when Pat Lucy went to be
ambassador to Mexico. And so he was there not all
that long, and he was not reelected after. But during
that time period, Martin Schreiber appointed me to the
county bench. And he was a friend, acquaintance
before that, and a dear friend after that, of course.
And he's always paid me the compliment to say that I
was one of the best decisions he ever made. So he's
how I got there.
Q We had the two levels of courts, the circuit court and
the county court. And while you were a county judge,
your husband was busy reforming the court system.
A Yes. No relation, honestly. I don't know, he
probably started that before.
Q '72 or '73, perhaps. I remember working a little with
him on that.
A I think that was the report. But, hey, they'd been
going for a couple years, he and CONRAD GOODENITE
(ph).
Q Yeah, yeah.
A So anyway, Jeffrey and his blue ribbon study committee
concluded that our court system was not efficient.
And it wasn't. I can tell you that when I became a
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county judge, we could try civil cases up to, like,
$3,000. We were limited to preliminary hearings in
felony cases, and we did small claims and traffic. So
you had six judges who were directed at the less, I
don't know, not lesser important, they're not less
important, but the smaller matters, and then four who
did the large civil cases and the felonies. It was a
very rigid system. And that blue ribbon committee
said it should be -- everybody should be the same.
You should have generalization. People should be
cross-trained. And that ultimately resulted in
constitutional amendments to the State Constitution.
So you can see it really had very little to do with
Jeff and me.
But in August of I think '79, only 18 months -- I
took the bench January 3, 1978. August 1st of 1979 by
virtue of the constitutional amendment, I became a
circuit judge, didn't have to run for the position,
and stayed there and ran for reelection five times. I
served five six-year terms and served just over 30
years on the bench.
Q Were you opposed at all?
A Never.
Q Never? I'm not surprised.
So when you began, there were ten circuit judges,
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or when you went in.
A Yes. So then I was Branch 10.
Q Branch 10.
A Last one, last duck on the boat.
Q I think now there are 22?
A Yeah. You'll have to ask someone else.
Q And you had said everybody should be a generalist and
should be cross-trained. That has been maybe amended
slightly now because, well, there's a rotation, so I
guess eventually everybody gets -- all the judges get
all the different experiences.
A Well, I can't speak to the current system. I just
don't know what tweaks they've made. But the bones of
that system were created by me here in Dane County.
Q As chief judge.
A As chief judge. I was appointed by the Wisconsin
Supreme Court to be chief judge in 1982. Now, think
about the years that we're talking about and how
rapidly this went.
Q Three years.
A Well, I was a county judge January 1, 1978, a circuit
judge August 1 of '79, and chief judge to replace
Richard Bardwell, a judge of many decades experience,
in July of 1982 and served until the end of June,
1988. When the whole generalism policy as a state
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required by the Wisconsin Supreme Court came into
being and had to be implemented, and I was the chief
judge of the Fifth Judicial District four counties,
Dane, Rock, Green, and Lafayette. And that was a
challenge. Not only am I a very young woman with
whatever differing attitudes people might have had to
me because of that, with independently-elected trial
judges who have run their courts, for better or worse,
as completely independent institutions other than the
fact that they've received funding from the state and
the county. There was a very -- there was not a
strong chief judge system.
So the board of judges and I agreed on a modified
rotation system where we'd have three divisions, and
this has probably been -- I know it's been tweaked to
some degree. It was the criminal division, the civil
and family division, and the juvenile division. And
under my regime, other than the juvenile division -- I
take that back. All of the judges drew civil and
criminal cases in different proportions. The criminal
judges were specialists in criminal, but they had some
civil cases. And I think that's changed. I think now
they are more pure divisions. But I had people
keeping in touch with the jurisdictions at all times.
The only exception was juvenile. That was a full-time
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job, and that was all those people did was to do
juvenile. And family was spread throughout the rest
of the judges. So in some form, that still is the
skeleton that I believe is in place up in the Dane
County Courthouse.
Q In addition to your administrative responsibilities,
you, of course, were trying cases?
A I was also writing the Judicial Benchbook.
Q Well, you were busy. So what -- do you remember any
cases? Do any cases stand out?
A This interview may go on all day. It's not going to.
But I remember the case of LaRon McKinley. That was a
felony case. And he had endangered somebody's life.
These were major felonies, a very violent assault. He
didn't kill anybody, though. It wasn't a murder case.
But he was in my court and was reputed by the bailiffs
to be one of the most dangerous people that Dane
County had ever seen. He had been convicted of
stabbing an inmate in the California system through
the bars with a pen and blinding him. This was a
violent person. He was uncontrollable and violent.
And there was extraordinary security in my court. We
had wand screeners at the doors, and he was shackled.
And to try to assure the fairest trial and not have it
appear to the jury that he was an extremely violent
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man, a couple things I ordered was he had to write
with a crayon so he couldn't stab anybody, and he was
shackled. One arm was to his waist, and his legs were
shackled together. And around the counsel table we
did like an ice cream social bunting, you know, to
shroud.
This guy picked up his leg, crossing it to show
the jury the shackles on his ankle. What a guy. When
he took the stand -- he testified in his own behalf --
he had to go to the stand with the jury outside of the
room and leave the stand because he was shackled. So
it was a remarkable case. It was covered broadly in
the press. High profile means high pressure for the
judge to make sure that everything will stand the test
of very close scrutiny.
And at his sentencing, he was given the right of
allocation, and he turned to the crowd -- he didn't
turn to me; he talked to the crowd -- he raised his
hands like Jesus Christ and basically said,
"If you
haven't walked in my shoes, you cannot judge me.
" He
was something.
Q So he was obviously convicted.
A Oh, he was convicted, yes.
Q He didn't threaten you?
A No, no.
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And I remember the case of -- I should have
thought more about this one. I don't need to tell too
many war stories, but this was a fellow who had fled
to Belize who had ordered the contract killing of his
business partner over a dispute over an airplane. He
was another real gem. And he was arrested by Interpol
and taken forcefully and returned to the United
States. And under agreement with the country he had
been seized from, he couldn't be -- the State agreed
or the Federal Government agreed that he would not be
sentenced to more than the maximum penalty in that
country for murder.
So we tried that case. And he had been gone for
three years. He was in my court charged with this
crime, fled to Belize. Three years later he's back in
my court and we continue with the prosecution. And he
was a real slippery character too. So I sentenced him
to something considerably longer when he was
convicted, of course, than the 20 years. And then the
governor commuted his sentence.
Q Well, both of those cases were sad, is the wrong word,
but tragic cases.
A Extreme cases.
Q Were there any happy memories?
A Oh, yes. Oh, many. Oh, yeah. When I served a
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rotation in the juvenile court, I use the word
"adopt,
" but when we left the juvenile court, we were
supposed to -- no, I adopted these kids. Not legally.
It was a boy with a very difficult and violent
background who acted out and was a very tough little
guy. And there was a young girl whose mother was a
prostitute, and that was a dependency case, and the
goal was to keep her from becoming a prostitute.
Well, these two were in my court repeatedly, so when I
left the juvenile court, I asked the chief judge, who
must have been -- I was done being chief judge at that
time -- Moeser, Judge Dan Moeser, if I could keep
those two cases, in violation of the rules for
rotation, and he gave me permission to do that. And
so I did keep them.
Now, the young boy did ultimately commit a felony
and went to prison. But the young girl went beyond
high school education. So, you know, one win and one
loss of two kids that had, you know, meant a lot to me
while I was struggling with their problems as a
juvenile judge.
Q Yeah. You served 30 years and then decided that was
sufficient?
A Yeah. So I was 62. I'm still young. I fought the
good battle on many fronts for many, many years. And
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one of the areas of tension, which is perfectly
appropriate, is the question of county funding of the
court system. It was a split funding system. I think
it still is. And in the early years when I was chief
judge, the county board didn't like this mandate from
the state that they fund the courts, which meant that
they pretty much didn't like the courts. And, you
know, there's a lot of strong personalities involved.
That's over-generalizing, I know, because there were
people who were supportive. But it was always a
battle at budget time. And I remember a county board
member saying to me, a crusty fellow who will go
unnamed, who said,
"Don't forget you're a state
judge.
" And I said,
"You don't have to tell me what I
am. I know what I am, but you're half the funding of
the courts, and I expect you to live up to that.
" So
this was a history of split power and courts have
needs and they thinking that we were bossing them
around and not liking that. And this battle repeated
itself from my chief judgeship through Moeser's chief
judgeship through Foust's chief judgeship. And as we
were going into about the, oh, when we built the jail,
we built the courthouse, and all these same tensions,
when we were starting about round seven in my career
of another contentious go-round with the county, and I
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was really tired of it, I just sort of felt I needed
to have a little more freedom in my own life. My kids
were growing and grown. I was starting to have
grandchildren -- I have ten of them now -- and I
thought, well, it's time to give some of the other
important things in my life more time and attention
than my full-time judgeship, which I gave it full-time
and more.
I mentioned the Benchbook. We can talk about that
too. And I was assistant dean of the Judicial
College. I was teaching Evidence and Judicial Craft
and I was doing a lot of extracurricular things in
support of the profession that I truly, truly loved.
But I decided to cut myself loose at the age of 62.
Thirty years and a month and a day is enough to call
it good.
And so I then recovered for about four months of
doing nothing, and then I started a
mediation/arbitration business.
Q Mediation and arbitration business, which you've
continued.
A Yes. I'm still -- my license plate says MEDIATOR.
Q I did I think about 20 arbitration, lending law
arbitration cases for the Better Business Bureau.
A Really?
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Q And they were very interesting.
A Yeah. I'll bet.
Q So, yeah, I know a bit about what you're doing now.
You also mentioned ten grandchildren. Five
children?
A Five children.
Q So during the course of your legal career, you were a
mother?
A Yes.
Q Describe that too.
A In 1979 I was pregnant with twins on the bench.
Probably one of the few judges who grew out of her
robe. And those children are now 37 to 44 years old.
And I have ten grandchildren.
Q Are any of your children lawyers?
A Yes. Two.
Q Two?
A Two of them.
Q And where are they?
A Three of my children are in Madison, Wisconsin, six of
my grandchildren. And one lawyer daughter is in
Chicago. And the one teacher daughter is in Portland,
Oregon, married with two of my grandchildren out
there.
Q We've talked about everything that's on my list, but
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I'm sure you have other things you'd like to talk
about.
A Well, just briefly about that twin pregnancy, there
was no maternity leave policy in the court system at
that time because it had not come up. And so in
consultation with the Supreme Court, I told them,
well, I actually had to leave the bench because the
twin pregnancy can be a little iffy at the end. So
Judge Sachtjen stood in for me during my leave. And I
had a total leave of four months both before and after
the birth.
And, I mean, the State was completely
nonjudgmental or nonplussed. I mean, they said you
take the time that you need. I don't know that it was
based on my character, but I wanted to get back there
as soon as I could. I felt a huge responsibility to
the litigants and the lawyers in my court. So that
was done handily. I suppose they must have a formal
policy now, but there was none when I asked for a
leave.
And the Benchbook, I do want to talk about the
Benchbook.
Q Yes.
A SOFON NODILSKI ?? was the clerk of the Supreme Court.
Q I remember.
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A SOFAN ???? I'm pausing because I think he may have
2
been a clerk to James E. Doyle. There's an early
3
connection there, and he went from there, I think. I
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knew SOFAN??? Before he was clerk of the Supreme
5
Court, so -- and he knew me. And he had a dream of
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developing a Judicial Benchbook for the trial judges
7
of the state. This was long -- he must have been
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there during court reorganization, and that may have
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been the reason he felt it was even more important
10
since we had this big upheaval that there be developed
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a Judicial Benchbook.
12
And there was a Judicial College, and Bill Eich,
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Judge Bill Eich was a teacher there. And he prepared
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outlines in the most interesting way. He had the
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citations in the left margin and then spare outlying
16
form in the right-hand margin. I thought it was
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great. And when SOFAN NODILSKI asked me if I would be
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the editor of the new Judicial Benchbook -- this was
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all extracurricular activity -- I, of course, said yes
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and listed Bill Eich, not sufficiently credited, with
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the format which is still the format of the Judicial
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Benchbook.
23
And we had three different committees, the family,
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juvenile, civil and the criminal. And it was at the
25
beginning a big community project to assign out
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subject areas, develop outlines. And my role as
editor was to see that there was a uniformity of
leanness and conformity to this different kind of an
outline, which is easy to use on the bench 'cause you
not only have the black letter rules, but you have the
citations. So if you're getting an oral decision and
you've got the Benchbook in front of you, I mean,
you're ready to rock and roll. I called it the recipe
book for trial judges. It didn't -- it gave you the
basics. And the hope was that if everybody performed
at the level that was represented by the standards in
the Benchbook that we would have more uniformity in
the trial courts in the state. And I believe that it
certainly pulled in that direction.
Q How long did it take to do that?
A Well, I'd have to look at the Benchbooks, which I
don't have at hand, to see when their first
publication was. It was two years in before the first
publication that we worked on this.
Q And it's constantly being revised?
A It's constantly being revised. In the first edition,
Shirley Abrahamson called me. She said,
"You know,
the family area is a little thin.
" I said,
"Shirley,
give me a break. You know, we're lucky we got this
out.
" I said,
"There will be additions.
" It was
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looseleaf tabbed. We could put in pages or we could
replace a section. And that is still the format that
it's in today.
And so I worked on that I believe for ten years.
And the committees fell away, and sometimes we didn't
even have money for a research assistant. And there
was one edition where there was one person working on
it, and it was me. And they did -- then we did have
research assistants, and I would assign other editors
to the various volumes. So we pulled it back up from
the abyss.
And then they decided to actually fund it. And,
um, I don't know exactly the structure for updating
it, but I was ready to be relieved of this really
large responsibility, and they were ready for a new
structure. And so I retired from that particular
project. And it still, I get the updates on it, and
I'm so proud of my recipe book, you know, and I think
it has served the judiciary very well 'cause people
come to the bench with different experiences. And
when I have mentored new judges, I've always said if
you're going into an area you're not familiar with,
get with that Benchbook and be sure you understand
everything that's in it, and then build, you know, go
to the Judicial College and talk to your colleagues.
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But that's a baseline for you.
And I did receive the Lifetime Judicial
Achievement Award from the State Bar I think largely
based on that Benchbook. Now, that's not why I did
it, but in fact, I never thought anybody really sort
of noticed except that it came into their chambers and
it was useful to them. So that was just a real lovely
surprise.
Q You have a lot of notes. Are there other things that
you wanted to talk about?
A Oh, no. I think we're --
Q I have one question that I have to put to you.
Do I recall an article about you and Jeff taking a
long motorcycle journey?
A Oh, yes.
Q Somehow I don't picture you on a Harley.
A Oh, it wasn't a Harley.
Q Oh. There. Okay.
A Okay. But it was a Harley-like bike, 675 pounds, a
Yamaha V Star. So we had ten years of lovely
adventures on our motorcycles. We rode around Lake
Superior. We rode down --
Q We'll edit Jeffrey out.
A He's saying I rode my own motorcycle. I was not a
passenger. I've never been a passenger. I've always
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been a driver.
Q I had a total of five cycles. The last one was a
Harley, but it was the smallest Harley ever made, a
Harley Sprint H.
A Oh, my goodness.
Q 250 cc's.
A Yeah. I bet it was zippy, though.
Q Oh, it was fun. But since I've been married, my wife
has discouraged my motorcycle.
A Last year we had done a full ten years of safe
motorcycling, knock on wood. And there have been some
high-profile terrible accidents, and we realized that
while we wore day-glow green and helmets and
reflectors and all of this that many of the
motorcyclists who suffered terrible things, including
my dear colleague, Steve Ebert, are doing everything
right and end up with terrible injuries or death.
So when that happened, when he died, Jeff and I
said ten years of good luck is good luck. Let's cash
in our chips and have our memories.
We do ride e-assisted bikes on the bike trails a
lot, and we love that.
Q I'm happy with what we've done --
A Okay.
Q -- if you are.
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A I do have one more thing from my notes. I was one of
the first judges to use computers and word processing
and printing my own opinions. I had complete control
over the creation, the editing, and the issuance of
them. And so I bought for my children an Apple II
Plus computer 64k. Your calculator has way more power
than that. I can't tell you the year, but I began
issuing opinions with my dot matrix printer. Charlie
Dykman called up and he said to me -- Judge Charlie
Dykman of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals called
up and said,
"Dammit, Angela, can't the county buy you
a better printer?" I said,
"Chuck, the county isn't
buying any computers for anybody, and that's my
printer, and that's all I got, so you'll have to live
with it.
"
Do you remember the dot matrix printers?
Q I do. When I was in high school in West Allis, I got
to take a computer programming course at UW-M on
Saturdays, and it was an IBM-620 computer. It took up
about the size of your house. And punch cards.
A Oh, yes.
Q And it had huge dot matrix printers attached to it.
A Oh, yeah.
Q It was a blast.
A One of the questions you asked on your outline is how
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has the practice of law changed.
2
Q Oh, yes.
3
A Well, I, in my own life, we used to visit relatives
4
who had outhouses in Pennsylvania in the coal mining
5
country, and in my own life we've come up to my Apple
6
watch. I mean, you know, it is extraordinary. Well,
7
that degree of change has existed in my legal career,
8
not the outhouse part, but, you know, old-fashioned,
9
single-lawyer offices with secretaries and typewriters
10
and carbon paper and legal research which was
11
three-fourths or more of your time to find the cases
12
in the digests and the various pocket parts of our
13
lives, and one-quarter or less of the time to analyze
14
it, understand it, and use it to flash research where
15
it takes way less than a quarter of the time. You can
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find it instantaneously and then spend seven-eighths
17
of your time understanding it, sorting it, using it
18
and writing your brief. It is nothing less than a
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revolution.
But I remember old-time lawyers that were like, in
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my memory, like movie stars. They looked like lawyers
22
and they had their bow ties and they -- you could tell
23
they were a lawyer, you know, from a mile away to our
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really corporate law practice now. So I've seen a
25
lot. And I've loved it all.
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Q Wonderful. I appreciate your time, and thank you very
2
much.
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A You are welcome.