Higginbotham carried that commitment to Madison and served as the first minority affairs coordinator under then Dane County Executive Rick Phelps. He also served as interim executive director for the Madison Equal Opportunities Commission after Rev. James C. Wright retired. And then Higginbotham received his opportunity from them Madison Mayor Paul Soglin to join the judiciary in 1992.

“The city of Madison had legislation go through creating the municipal court,” Higginbotham recalled. “The deal was that whoever was appointed couldn’t run for it eventually. At the same time, the state legislature was creating certain new branches of circuit court in various parts of the state and that included Dane County. So when I was appointed, I already knew that my tenure with the municipal court was short. But I also had an eye on the Dane County Circuit Court that was in the process of getting created. By the time that legislation went through, I had already started to finish up my time with the Madison Municipal Court.”

Higginbotham’s service as municipal court judge helped mold his general approach to justice, that it was all about the people who came before him.

“The municipal court, of course, handled municipal ordinance violations and nothing else,” Higginbotham said. “That could be a wide variety of different things, anywhere from traffic tickets to dogs barking to trash to speeding tickets to low-level disorderly conduct. The municipal court more than any other court had an impact on people’s immediate lives. It’s the court that people probably come most familiar with in terms of the legal system. Most of them appear without lawyers unless it was first-offense drunk driving. But most people attend without lawyers and that was a very interesting experience. I really took to heart that was the case. I was steadfast in trying to make sure that the experience was the kind of experience where they felt it was fair, that I listened to them, that whatever the outcome was, it was based on fairness, justice, the facts and the law. And then I explained it. I really went out of my way to make sure that people understood my rulings. And I think I was successful with that. I felt good about it.”

When the new circuit court branch was created in 1994, Higginbotham ran for it and won with 75 percent of the vote. He sat on that bench for nine years.

“Circuit court was a whole different story,” Higginbotham said. “I sat on jury trials of anywhere from first-degree intentional homicide and a really bad drug deal that went down to mental commitment hearings to juvenile court hearings to family hearings to tons and tons and tons of civil law suits. One of the cases involved the Milwaukee school voucher case. I was the trial judge who decided that case. That case made headlines all across the country. At the major hearing, all of the major media was there including CNN, New York Times, LA Times, and the Washington Post. It was really heavy-duty. And it took me a long time to write that opinion. It was so intense that even in the quiet of my chambers, while typing, my hands were shaking because I knew it was that important. I did tons and tons of research. And it was a decision that was clearly based on the law, Wisconsin law, not federal law. If you follow the federal constitutional decisions on that issue, it was going to come out differently. But Wisconsin case law on this topic was actually pretty clear including notes from the constitutional convention in 1848 in putting together Wisconsin’s constitution. Based on that, it actually wasn’t difficult to determine that under Wisconsin law, the Milwaukee school voucher program was unconstitutional. And I felt compelled to make that decision on what the law said and not based on what my opinion was because my opinion was irrelevant. It’s never relevant. It’s always what’s in front of you and what the law provides.”

But them judicial opportunity came knocking again. Higginbotham had unsuccessfully run for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and barely lost the primary. That caught the notice of Wisconsin’s political leaders. Judge Pat Roggensack had left the Court of Appeals to assume her the Supreme Court post that she had won. And so in 2003, Higginbotham became Wisconsin’s first African American Appellate judge.

Next issue: Reflecting on the rule of law