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Madison — Breaking with long-standing practice, state Supreme Court justices have imposed time limits on themselves to discuss cases in hopes it will push them to complete their work by the end of June.

The plan was adopted last month in private amid some dissent as tensions continue to simmer on a court often marked by personal disagreements.

"In order to get our work done before the end of June, such time limits appear, unfortunately, to be necessary," Justice N. Patrick Crooks wrote his fellow justices in a May 19 email.

Crooks, 76, wrote he was proposing the idea with "considerable reluctance" and also made clear he would not run for a third 10-year term in 2016.

"I find it difficult to make these suggestions, since it would be easier for me to remain silent and finish my term and quietly retire," he wrote.

He offered his plan as the justices rushed to finish their work by a self-imposed June 30 deadline that the court has long followed. He urged justices to limit the amount of time they spend hashing out cases in closed conference, with 15 minutes allotted for the lead author of an opinion or dissent and five minutes for everyone else.

Soon after, the court adopted time limits on a 5-2 vote in a closed session. Joining Crooks were the four conservatives who control the court — Justices Michael Gableman, David Prosser, Patience Roggensack and Annette Ziegler.

Opposed were the court's two liberals, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.

Crooks often sides with the conservatives on criminal cases, but generally backs the court's two liberals on civil cases, administrative matters and ethics policies.

Before the vote, Abrahamson in a four-page memo acknowledged the justices are behind in their work but said the solution is to meet more often, not to limit debate. She noted the court did not meet during a four-week stretch from April to May because of time off that individual justices had requested last year.

"I fear that cutting short our discussions prematurely would compromise the quality of opinions and the deliberation upon which this court depends," Abrahamson wrote.

Her May 21 memo indicated the court at that point had yet to discuss three-quarters of the cases it plans to decide by June 30.

"With this caseload, I think it's hard to justify to the litigants and public that we will not be giving full collegial discussion and careful deliberation to 46 of the 60 cases now pending before us," she wrote.

Her memo held out the possibility that two high-profile cases, to be written by Gableman, could be put off until September, during the court's next term. One of those cases deals with a challenge to Gov. Scott Walker's limits on collective bargaining for public workers; the other addresses the ability of the University of Wisconsin System to ban from its campuses Jeffrey Decker, the son of a former state senator who has protested how university officials handle student fees and conduct their business.

A Dane County judge has ruled Walker's labor limits violate the state constitution, and a delay on deciding that case would frustrate supporters of the measure, known as Act 10.

Abrahamson has continued to lobby for adding more dates for the court to discuss cases, writing in a Tuesday email to the other justices that they would be "very hard pressed" to complete their work on time if they don't schedule more meetings.

In response, Ziegler suggested other ways to make the court more efficient in finalizing decisions, such as circulating drafts earlier and telling each other by email whether they will sign onto an opinion.

"Our problem rests with the way we use the time that we have scheduled, rather than a need to schedule more time," Ziegler wrote.

Twitter: twitter.com/patrickdmarley