Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley was scolded by a Wikipedia editor this month for her heavy editing of her own biography on the online encyclopedia.
Last week, a person with the Twitter handle @arizonasunblock from Tampa, Florida, noticed that Bradley, who has been on the high court since 2015, appeared to make major changes to her Wikipedia biography earlier this year.
"Liberal media has distorted my record since the beginning of my judicial career, and I refuse to let false accusations go unchecked," Bradley told the Journal Sentinel in an email. "On my wikipedia page, I added excerpts from actual opinions and removed dishonest information about my background."
What, then, was getting under her skin?
It's clear Bradley really, really disliked the section in her Wikipedia page dealing with a Republican challenge to the stay-at-home order issued by the administration of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in response the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to her Wikipedia page, in May 2020, Bradley "compared the state's stay-at-home orders to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II," a case known as Korematsu v. the United States.
Also, not sure if she knows how to use the internet:
"Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice @JudgeBradleyWI is currently engaging in an edit war on her Wikipedia page under an anonymous username that she also uses in her personal email."
The username? "rlgbjd," which could very well refer to Rebecca Lynn Grassl Bradley, J.D. She received her law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1996.
It turns out the Tampa tweeter had guessed correctly.
"It's so unfair that my own words can be written down for posterity!"
Tell me she doesn't know that just because you've edited a Wikipedia page, that the previous version still exists, and is likely to draw attention and discussion because of your edits.
And is super easy to revert to the prior version too. It's basically two clicks to make it happen. And then have an admin protect the page to only allow established editors so randos can't do this with just an IP address again.
I'm pretty sure opinion doesn't mean what you think it does. When a judge writes up an opinion it's a bit stronger than me saying what I do or don't like or how I feel about something. Same as between scientific theory and the other definition.