He is a nationally known law professor of 27 years who has been asked for advice on judicial nominees by Senator Herb Kohl and consulted with Barack Obama during the nomination of Merrick Garland. Ed's legal career started with a leading law firm in Washington DC before he decided to become a teacher and mentor of young people preparing to be lawyers. He has a long record of working for legal services for the Latino community and immigrants. He would be the first Latino to serve on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Although he is a progressive, he speaks and conducts himself in keeping with the tenet that judges should be independent and impartial.
As far as the idea that "judicial experience" is necessary for this office, the fact is that trial courts operate differently from appellate courts, which decide matters of law rather than applying the law in a particular case. Ed's deep grounding in constitutional law is an advantage here. Some of the greatest appellate jurists, including Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Abe Fortas, William O. Douglas, and Louis Brandeis, had never before served as judges (and all had been professors).
= new reply since forum marked as read