Courts (and the legal field in its entirety) should choose civility.

• Author: Herman, Gregg

Byline: GREGG HERMAN

There are frequent reminders for lawyers in Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs and articles on the importance of civility among adversaries. Civility, like all good lessons, should flow from the top down, as children learn from their parents. In law, that means civility starts with the judges and court commissioners.

Recently, the Wisconsin judicial oversight panel dismissed a complaint against Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky for the judge's sarcastic comments to one of former President Donald Trump's lawyers. In doing so, the panel expressed concern about the justice's actions and warned her to remain neutral and avoid making sarcastic remarks from the bench.

According to reports, during oral arguments in a case involving challenges to the 2020 election Justice Karofsky, among other things, accused the lawyer for Donald Trump of trying to protect his "king." She also told the lawyer that suggesting the election was marred by fraud was "nothing short of shameful."

While judicial complaints are confidential under Wisconsin law, the complaint became public because Justice Karofsky made it so by releasing documents to The Associated Press. Apparently, she was proud enough of the complaint to go public with it.

While I'm not nave enough to think that oral arguments don't involve some posturing (I had my own horrible experience with then-Justice Kelly while representing the Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR) and he dominated oral arguments by attacking the OLR on an irrelevant point), they are designed to be an exchange of views regarding the merits of the case, not an...