Gov. Jim Doyle, who spoke at the Law School earlier this year, appointed Butler as the first black Wisconsin Supreme Court justice in 2004.,”Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler spoke to students and faculty about his upcoming election and the need for better bipartisanship in the judicial system Wednesday in Sensenbrenner Hall.

Gov. Jim Doyle, who spoke at the Law School earlier this year, appointed Butler as the first black Wisconsin Supreme Court justice in 2004.

Butler now faces a statewide election in April. If elected, he would serve a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court, and become the first black person to be elected to statewide office in Wisconsin since 1978.

Mike Gousha, distinguished fellow of public policy and law, led the discussion and first asked Butler about whether he was looking forward to the campaign.

Butler replied by speaking his concern about running for office and still performing his job as a Supreme Court justice.

"When you have a full-time job to keep the job what suffers is sleep, family time and personal time," he said. "You just have to work through it."

Butler spoke about the need for judges to be neither liberal nor conservative, but open-minded on all issues and not bring their own agendas into the courtroom.

"Judges are not politicians," Butler said. "We're not supposed to be out there trying to run on issues. Our job is to evaluate the case before us, interpret the facts, apply the law to them and come done with a decision that closely approximates justice."

This makes an election for a state Supreme Court justice especially sticky, he said.

"We have to make decisions and those decisions are often unpopular," Butler said. "We're not trying to win popularity contests."

Butler said he believes bipartisanship has been lost in the judicial system and candidates and voters are more worried about a justice's political stance than judicial philosophy.

"My philosophy is really going in with an open mind," Butler said. He said he embraces "being one who listens to the arguments, not having an agenda."

"I think it's inappropriate, for example, for me to come up here and say I'm a liberal, or say I'm a conservative or say I'm a Democrat, or a Republican," Butler said.

Butler went on to speak about using his bipartisanship to delve more deeply into cases brought to the state Supreme Court.

"I love getting underneath cases," Butler said. He said he studies every case with a fine-toothed comb.

Students gave mixed reviews about Butler's conversation with Gousha.

"He seemed unwilling to recognize the immense public policy impact of the court's decisions," said Daniel Suhr, a third-year law student.

But Joe Cisewski, a second-year law student, said, "I thought the justice was extremely candid and came off extremely fair-minded."

Butler will be running against Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman and Sun Prairie attorney Michael Schutze for the state Supreme Court justice position in April.

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