Beloved Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser Passes Away: A Legacy Remembered

David Prosser, a conservative who served on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court for almost 20 years, passed away on Sunday night. According to his relatives, Prosser had cancer at the age of 81. Prosser was a Republican state representative for eighteen years, including a term as Assembly speaker in 1995, before becoming the state’s highest court. In 1996, he made an unsuccessful run for Congress. Born in Chicago and raised in Appleton, Prosser was initially chosen by Republican Governor Tommy Thompson to a half term on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court in 1998. Prosser was elected to full terms on the court twice after that.

Among them was a close victory over JoAnne Kloppenburg in April 2011 that held up in a recount. Most people viewed that election as a referendum. Act 10, a state statute that had provoked widespread protests at the Wisconsin state Capitol, was essentially the subject of that election. In March 2011, Republican Governor Scott Walker passed sweeping legislation that limited most public employees’ rights to collective bargaining. Prosser’s “keen intellect and deep sense of fairness to every case” were hailed by Wisconsin Chief Justice Anette Ziegler in a statement released Monday.

According to the statement, “he was well known for delving into the books and doing extensive research, frequently ‘burning the midnight oil’ in the law library.” “Justice Prosser was devoted to the rule of law and had a critical understanding of it.” Justice David Prosser of the Wisconsin Supreme Court asking a question on June 6, 2011, at a hearing held at the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. Wisconsin State Journal/John Hart via AP
Prosser was a member of the conservative majority on the court that ultimately upheld Act 10, among other rulings.

In 2011, Prosser and a leftist justice got into a physical altercation over Act 10 deliberations. Prosser admitted he put his hands on Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s neck after he says she charged at him. No charges were filed following a criminal investigation into the incident. Prosser retired from the Wisconsin Supreme Court court in 2016, partway through his 10-year term. Shortly before his retirement, the high court named Wisconsin’s Law Library in his honor.

The state Supreme Court, however, renamed the library in 2024 in honor of Wisconsin’s first female lawyer, Lavinia Goodell, after liberal justices secured a majority. Last year, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, asked many previous justices, including Prosser, to advise lawmakers on whether to try to remove newly elected liberal justice Janet Protasiewicz from office. Protasiewicz has been under fire from Republicans for failing to recuse herself from cases involving the creation of Wisconsin’s electoral districts after she called the legislative maps “rigged” during the campaign.

However, in an email to Vos, Prosser cautioned against trying to remove the justice, calling impeachment “serious, severe, and rare.” Thompson recalled having a conversation about current affairs with a beaming Prosser last week. According to Thompson’s statement, “David was a man of deep conviction and intense loyalty to our way of life that understood that there could be no true democracy without citizen service and that to avoid the slings and arrows of public life was to surrender one’s convictions.” “He never did.” Plans for the funeral are still pending.