Editor's foreword.

• Author: Bonventre, Vincent Martin

We honor Shirley S. Abrahamson with this issue of State Constitutional Commentary. The Chief Justice of Wisconsin, who has honored us by her continuing participation as an original member of our professional board of editors, joins an extraordinarily distinguished group of past honorees. Indeed, Chief Justice Abrahamson reflects so many of the qualities and contributions that have characterized the other preeminent jurists to whom we have paid tribute in these pages.

Like the late Stanley Mosk of California, Shirley Abrahamson's tenure, tenacity, productivity, and both personal and public persona have made her one of the few state court judges with a truly national reputation, as well as an esteem usually reserved for those at the very top of the federal judiciary. Like Hans Linde of Oregon, she not only helped to give birth to the renaissance of state courts and state constitutional law in the latter part of the last century, but she has continued in her judicial and scholarly writings to provide the intellectual foundation and academic and judicial respectability and credibility that might otherwise have been lacking. Like Stanley G. Feldman of Arizona, she has been responsible in large measure for the elevation of her court in the regard in which it is widely and appropriately held as one of the premier judicial tribunals in America today, state or federal. And like the late Lawrence H. Cooke of New York, she is rightly admired by court scholars and administrators nationwide for her progressive and perceptive improvements in the delivery of judicial services and the functioning of her state's judicial system, as much as she is for her progressive and perceptive jurisprudence.

The preface by State Constitutional Commentary's Chair, Stanley Feldman, together with the several tributes to Shirley Abrahamson which it introduces, speaks more eloquently and effusively about her accomplishments and about her as a person. We are honored to present this dedication to Chief Justice Abrahamson just as much as we hope it honors her.

Following the dedication, three lead articles explore different facets of civil liberties developments in the states. Horst Dippel of Germany's University of Kassel looks at the contribution of the states to individual rights in the early American republic. The annual offering of our senior consulting editor, Stanley H. Friedelbaum, examines recent state court treatment of expressive freedom. Editorial board member Thomas...