Judge Pedro Colón Is a Candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court: Diversity and Democracy (Part 2 of 2)
Pedro Colón has been elected to the Wisconsin Legislature, Milwaukee County Circuit Court, the and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
by Jonathan Gramling
Judge Pedro Colón, who sits on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District 1, has grown up and lived appreciating diversity and democracy. Colón was born in Puerto Rico and then moved with his family to Milwaukee when he was a young child. He was exposed to layers of diversity that he would have never experienced in Puerto Rico. He went to Wisconsin Avenue School where the neighborhood enrollment was 80 percent Black. And he found diversity within Milwaukee’s south side Latino community.
Colón would go on to become an elected state legislator, Milwaukee County circuit judge and member of the WI State Court of Appeals. He has had many experiences to hone his judicial philosophy as he runs to be elected to the WI Supreme Court.
Through the state legislature, Colón learned the underpinnings of democracy.
“Most legislators go to Madison to do good work,” Colón observed. “And the legislature is a very difficult place. But the legislature wants to perpetuate its own power. That’s basic U.S. Constitutional thinking. That’s why we have checks and balances. And so the legislature is a very productive place full of good people who also want to perpetuate power. And so what do you do is judge people as they come in. You judge them based on what it means for democracy.”
He also saw the Wisconsin Constitution from the inside out.
“I served six years on Joint Finance,” Colón said. “And so those six years were really tough substantively and politically. That is what I call my Ph.D. in Wisconsin. I know how education is funded at the K-5 to 12 level. I know how we keep our UW System together. I know how we keep transportation and road building together. I know how we do do corrections. That was an incredible learning experience for me. I used to kid with my friends. ‘I have so much useless knowledge.’ I wasn’t going to see circuit court cases around how we contribute funds for the roads. It doesn’t show up. And then I did some years in circuit court. I will tell you what it does. It’s good background and now that I have this background on the Court of Appeals. I know how democracy really works. And there is some days where democracy shows its ugliest face. But there are a lot of days when people are actually working to get good things done.”
Colón feels that justices can’t proclaim themselves to be a certain type of judge or have a concrete judicial philosophy because it creates a perceptual or judgment box that may preclude considering facts on their own merit.
“Originalists and these folks who who have visions in the application of the law have become people who have this veneer of absolute prison around what they believe as opposed to what the conflict is within their division, in my case, the state, and how it is guided by new technologies and new findings around science and so forth,” Colón asserted. “And they say, ‘Well, our views are so clear that we are going to look back. We’re always going to look back even when it doesn’t fit the mode. And we’re going to find things only that we are clearly there.’ Well my definition of Constitution is that some things are very clear, but the majority of things are meant to have challenges around difficult situations so that you can create decisions that bind people to the concept of democracy and to the concept of individual rights and how people interface is very important. But I think all of these isms that they have essentially alienated humans to the extent that now corporations have First Amendment rights.”
Colón is a great believer in science as a way to determine what the facts are and in this way, the state constitution is modernized using the same principles, but using new techniques to view the facts.
“You can just rule for people,” Colón said. “At the end of the day, back to this idea of community, we all have to survive under rulings that are basically and ethically bound by the concepts of our State Constitution. And our State Constitution tells you a lot of things. It says K-12 education should be reasonably funded. It says we are going to qualify electors consistent with what we have always have done. It says that we are going to create districts like we always have, which is not to say that we can’t do it differently. But ultimately, the value is not how much power does one party get over the other. It’s usually, ‘How do you preserve a robust democracy where people participate and can see themselves participating in legitimate ways. And then all this analysis and all of the isms and all of this monkeying around as to how George Washington put on his boots is not as important as to what George Washington did to create a great nation.”
The state constitution has to be a living document to meet the needs of today’s democracy.
“You don’t know how the cases are coming up,” Colón observed. “That’s why you have to deal with the cases as they come. There are not preconceived boxes under which you put the cases. The only preconceived box is jurisprudence. What does precedent say for this case because you have to respect the tradition. And that is very important for the law, civility and all of the good things that are also a part of the law. And you look to the Constitution. But you don’t look through what happened between 1772-1778 and how it is that they harnessed a horse at that time to find out how it is that we should talk about a case in which Uber is related because the technology is different and other things are different. And of course we should move forward. This country is always forward-looking. And I think that is healthy. I think these isms are ways in which you box a decision before it’s even out.”
And so when it comes down to it, the state constitution is built from the people up.
“The beautiful thing about Wisconsin and better government is that we create these environments around which people can hopefully succeed,” Colón observed. “That ultimately is the fabric of life. It’s like this dependency around being ethically bound to each other. And so then what you look like doesn’t indicate who you are. You start to find things that way. What you look like is secondary to what it is you are trying to do. And I think we are all trying to do is get along, succeed and be reasonably ethical to each other. And only get in the way when it matters, when you are submerging someone else’s rights or someone else’s opportunity and not looking at it in the ways which are objective. That is why I love the law too. I look upon the law as the great equalizer. I still believe in it.”
And it is this building upon the rights of the individual that makes Wisconsin democracy fair and allows everyone to progress.
“I always tell people, ‘Wisconsin isn’t progressive because you and I say so,’” Colón said. “Wisconsin is progressive because our Constitution is progressive.’ And so when it comes to a lot of these issues, you just have to look to the Constitution. People have to interface with democracy in ways those decisions make sense. And so when you have gerrymandering, we have to coalesce around community of interests. And it can’t just be completely decided by what I call ‘online intelligence’ or ‘social intelligence,’ that you can buy in sort of plastic strips that breathe one way or the other. And that leads me to how is it that we decide this fairly for everyone because The Constitution is progressive. It’s not for Republicans and it’s not for Democrats. It is for the whole state to have an understanding about what kind of democracy that we want to be.”
Colón is a firm believer in precedent.
“What we have to do as judges is be the grown-ups for the state and create conditions in which democracy fulfills what it has traditionally fulfilled,” Colón said. “And again, we don’t have to link and twist and turn everything when we have a progressive constitution that allows us to fundamentally do that. If you want to label me, I am an American Traditionalist. We look at the context. We look at our Constitution. And we decide how do we preserve the constitutional standards for liberty and equality to the best of our abilities. And I think the precedence is there. There are things that will always come up that I think we should respect the precedence. I firmly do. And I also think that there is no bigger precedence than what the Constitution says.”
Colón is grateful to the state of Wisconsin for giving him the opportunity to make something of his life.
“I never thought I would be here to be frank with you,” Colón said. “I think the fact that I am a viable candidate for the Supreme Court for this state really says a lot about our state. I came here. I didn’t speak English. I went to Wisconsin Avenue School. Obviously, I want to do it. And I want to do it with my personal understanding of what I should do. But I also have been helped by so many people in this state and the state has been so fair to me and so good about the things that I have been able to accomplish that I should put something back into it.”
And the key to who Colón is is that he loves to engage with everyday people.
“I think the number one ingredient is that you enjoy talking to people, but mostly that you enjoy listening to people,” Colón said about campaigning. “Now I get the young people who say, ‘Can I have lunch with you Pedro so you can tell me what the magic sauce is for running for office? What advice do you have?’ And I always say, ‘You should be talking to different people to start a conversation and then just listen to people and really understand where they are coming from. And that will make you a great campaigner and someone who will succeed.’ Unless you let a bunch of consultants tell you that you can’t say this and you can’t talk about that, at the end of the day, you become this product that doesn’t have any spontaneity or authenticity around what you say. Luckily enough, I’m not that disciplined to just stay on talking points. And I always want to know more about people. One question follows another because people are just inherently interesting.”
It is Pedro Colón’s love of the law and democracy and most important his belief in everyday Wisconsinites that may very well propel him to become Wisconsin’s next supreme court justice in 2027.
