Wisconsin likes to be the rebel.

Not on important things like health care or gay marriage. That’s for wimps.

No, we’re the outsiders to the more mundane and sensible pieces of the law.

We don’t need a permit to carry a gun, we’ll just walk around with it in broad daylight, thank you very much. We don’t need to be thrown in jail for drunken driving, we can afford to play it dangerous the first time. Until recently, we didn’t even know the meaning of car insurance. And sending our kids to kindergarten? We don’t need no German education. What are we, Nazis?

Yeah, we’re badasses when it comes to breaking the rules. Nearly every other state has regulated and codified things that are common sense to everybody, but not us.

Well, not until “the man” decided to harsh our mellow.

We want to pull out a gun while watering our lawn, now “the man” cuffs us.

We want to take another tequila-fueled spin down I-94, now we have to install ignition interlock devices on our cars. Plus, just because we it did for a fourth time, now we can’t vote! Oh well, I guess “John Vanek” will be voting in the next year’s primaries. After all, it’s not like they’ll check the ID.

But even with all of our stands of defiance against “convention” and “good government” and “prevention of roadway death,” we still got one thing left for sure: When my lawyer walks in to defend me for my radical ways, he’s living the dream himself — he never even took the bar exam.

That’s right. Wisconsin is the only state in the nation that doesn’t require the bar exam for graduates from particular schools — namely the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Marquette University.

They’ve got high enough standards. Sure, the GPA and LSAT scores aren’t as high as, say, Yale or University or Virginia. Hell, using those criteria, University of Colorado-Boulder is a smidgen better. But they have bar passage rates of around 91 percent anyway. So who cares, right?

Well, once again, “the man” has to step in and ruin everything.

The case of Wiesmueller v. Kosubucki involves a claim that this waiver discriminates against out-of-state law students and therefore violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Although District Court in Western Wisconsin dismissed the case, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has kicked it back down to them for re-evaluation.

Now we could go on about how UW-Madison isn’t really more qualified than any other American Bar Association-accredited schools in the nation and to limit it to Marquette and UW does seem a bit unfair, if not unconstitutional. We could also say making the bar optional for these graduates within Wisconsin not only does a disservice to unity across the profession, but also encourages those graduates to limit their practice to the state, rather than exporting the Wisconsin idea to the rest of country like we should be doing anyhow. (After all, we have enough lawyers — just ask former State Rep. Frank Lasee. Why else would he try to eliminate the UW Law School’s funding?)

But this isn’t about making sure our grads meet the highest professional and ethical standards they possibly could. If that were the case, we could throw the fact that Wisconsin is one of only three states that doesn’t require the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination onto the pile. The issue of constitutionality, while central to the case, isn’t even what upsets me most.

The bigger issue is we raise impediments to changing our most arcane and unnecessary laws as if it were a point of pride. Yes, parents can make their own choice about sending children to kindergarten. Yes, first-time drunken drivers don’t necessarily need jail time off the bat. And yes, you don’t need to require permits for guns.

But regulation of those things doesn’t merit such fierce opposition. Our diploma privilege has been around since 1870 — considering every other state has dropped the practice, is it such a shot to Wisconsin pride or progress if we complete the set? It’ll be harder, certainly, and those two schools won’t have a monopoly on Wisconsin law grads, but if a few more people get weeded out of the profession, isn’t that the point?

Now, this doesn’t seem like such a problem because they’re small beans. Limits on brewpubs aren’t really a cause for concern. It’s not a rebellion against conventional wisdom, it’s holding on to a conception of things being “the way the were.” And while that’s often silly, it’s not usually challenged.

But think down the road. If we keep up this obstructive approach to state law for another few decades, what trends and accepted norms will this state be lax to usher in when the rest of the country already has? Will we, in 50 years time, be saying, “Well, it’s just easier to leave the marriage ban in place?”

I’m tired of having a year-round Legislature with such a complacent agenda. If we’re going to approve of a maverick stance on the issues, lets stop electing judges. Let’s at least talk about Healthy Wisconsin. Let’s start drastically hiking the amount of financial aid for college students. Let’s take the gay marriage ban down.

Let’s be rebels for taking risks, not for avoiding them.

Jason Smathers ([email protected]) is a first-year graduate student majoring in journalism.