School Trust Lands: The Law of America's Educational Land Trusts

Appendix A — Wisconsin (v2)

Built September 29, 2026 against the Wisconsin Supreme Court opinions held in the Library's collection, each read in full; first published that day. Revised September 30, 2026 to add three more opinions, each read in full. Drafted with Claude, an AI system, and published by America's School Trust Library. Not legal advice.

About this appendix. The hornbook reads forward, from doctrine to cases. This appendix reads backward, from state to doctrine: Wisconsin's cases are listed in bullet form, each entry cross-citing the hornbook sections it supports, so a practitioner can open her own state's entry and walk into the treatise from there. Every case below was read against the full primary opinion held in the Library's collection; claims that could not be resolved from a primary are flagged rather than asserted.

Why Wisconsin is worth a reader's time. Wisconsin's federal grant is the lean single-section kind, which the Library's research file describes as carrying no trust language. Its supreme court nonetheless treated the school fund as a trust the legislature could not touch. In 1894 it said: "The school fund is a trust fund, and is placed by the constitution beyond the power of the legislature to divert it to any other use than the support of the schools of the state." In 1915, in a long opinion on the State's forest reserve, it applied that rule to a forest-reserve program the legislature had built partly out of school lands.

The same 1915 opinion also marks a boundary. For the lands the United States granted for schools, the court held that control belongs to the constitutional board of commissioners, and the legislature may neither withhold them from sale nor turn them into parks or forests. For the much larger body of swamp-grant lands later set apart for schools, it held the opposite on control. The legislature may manage those lands, provided it manages them to produce money for the school fund.

Three narrower opinions fill in the picture. In 1861 the court held that only the board of commissioners could convey school land, so a patent signed by the governor and the secretary of state was void. In 1884 it read the statutes then in force to forbid the commissioners to withdraw lands from private sale once they had been offered at auction and remained unsold; ten years later the court called that reading a mistake as to school lands. And in 1912 it held that the State's suit to collect fine money owed to the school fund runs under the ordinary statutes of limitation.

What this entry corrects. Building it on September 29 found one published description that the 1915 opinion does not support, on the Library's own Court Atlas. That description was corrected the same day (corrections log 035). The September 30 revision found nothing published that the three added opinions contradict. The details are at the end.

WISCONSIN

Granting instrument. The Enabling Act of August 6, 1846, ch. 89, § 7, 9 Stat. 56, granted section 16 of every township for the use of schools. Wisconsin was admitted by the Act of May 29, 1848, ch. 50, 9 Stat. 233. [VERIFY: the text of both acts, including whether the grant carries any trust language. Neither is held in this collection, and no held opinion quotes the school-section grant.] → Ch. 2, § 2.3 (the single-section states; published as § 1.3).

Constitutional reception. The held opinions quote or describe four provisions of article X of the 1848 constitution.

• Article X, § 2, the school fund. The 1915 court describes the section as covering two kinds of property: lands "granted . . . to the state for educational purposes", and the money derived from any grant whose purposes are not specified. "All were set aside as a separate fund to be called the 'school fund.'" (160 Wis. at 95; inner quotation marks rendered as single.) The 1894 court cites the same section for the proposition that the fund is a trust fund beyond legislative diversion (88 Wis. at 83).

  • The 1912 court quotes the section's distribution clause. The school fund is one "the interest of which and all other revenues derived from the school lands shall be exclusively applied to the following objects". The first object is "To the support and maintenance of common schools in each school district, and the purchase of suitable libraries and apparatus therefor." The second: "The residue shall be appropriated to the support and maintenance of academies and normal schools, and suitable libraries and apparatus therefor." (152 Wis. at 233.)
  • It also quotes the clause that brings into the fund "the clear proceeds of all fines collected in the several counties for any breach of the penal laws" (152 Wis. at 233).

• Article X, § 7, the board. The 1861 court describes the section as declaring "that the secretary of state, state treasurer and attorney general shall constitute a board of commissioners for the sale of the school and university lands" (13 Wis. at 480). These are the court's words, not the constitution's.

• Article X, § 8, the power to withhold from sale. "The commissioners shall have power to withhold from sale any portion of such lands, when they shall deem it expedient." (Quoted at 88 Wis. at 83.)

• Article X, § 8, sale after appraisal. "Provision shall be made by law for the sale of all school and university lands after they shall have been appraised." (Quoted at 88 Wis. at 85.)

[VERIFY: the constitutional text itself, original and current. No primary held here reproduces article X in full.] → § 3.3; § 3.4.

Administering body. The commissioners of public lands: the secretary of state, the state treasurer and the attorney general, sitting as a board. The 1915 court describes control of the lands, "in the main, as to 'school lands proper' at least", as placed "absolutely, with the three constitutional officers, the secretary of state, state treasurer, and the attorney general as a board of commissioners" (160 Wis. at 117). The power to convey is the board's alone. A patent signed by the governor and the secretary of state was held "inoperative and void" as a conveyance of the legal title (13 Wis. at 481). [VERIFY: the board's current name and statutes, and any current fund figures. The Library's state page carries them from its research file; no primary held here establishes them.] → § 3.5.

Why Wisconsin matters to the field. Five contributions.

1. A trust fund located in the state constitution. Neither held opinion finds the trust in the 1846 grant. Wisconsin's courts located it in article X of the state constitution, and they enforced it against the legislature. "The school and university trust funds are high above the competency of the legislature to destructively assault them." (160 Wis. at 68.) → § 3.3; § 4.3; § 4.4.

2. The board's discretion, not the legislature's. The constitution gives the commissioners, and no one else, the power to withhold school lands from sale. The legislature "could not set them, or any part of them, apart for a state park", and "[n]either could it withhold these lands from sale" (88 Wis. at 83). The commissioners alone may convey the lands; a patent signed by other officers is void (13 Wis. at 481). → § 3.4; § 3.5.

3. Two classes of school lands. Lands granted by the United States for schools ("school lands proper") are under the board's constitutional control. Swamp-grant lands set apart for schools are school-fund lands "as regards the manner of handling the same", bound to produce money for the fund, "but under the control of the legislature in respect to the manner of dealing therewith for such purpose" (160 Wis. at 154). → § 3.5; § 5.2.

4. An accounting ordered by the court. Finding trust money confused with forestry and general-fund money, the court declared an equitable lien in favor of the trust funds and ordered an accounting of all dealings with the trust-fund lands (160 Wis. at 154–56). The accounting was carried out, and confirmed with modifications, in 1916 (162 Wis. 609). → § 12.5; § 18.4; § 18.5.

5. A limit on recovery. The constitutional dedication of fine proceeds to the school fund does not exempt the State's suit to collect them from the general statutes of limitation. "We perceive nothing in the provisions of the constitution that prohibits the legislature from applying limitation statutes to bar recovery by the state of moneys for the benefit of this fund." (152 Wis. at 234.) → § 12.2; § 18.7.

The cases

• McCabe v. Mazzuchelli, 13 Wis. 478 (1861) (Dixon, C.J.; Cole, J., concurring).

  • Posture. Charles McCabe bought land from "the commissioners of the school and university lands in May, 1851", paid for it in full, and lived on it with his family as a homestead (at 480). He later assigned his rights under the school-land certificate without his wife's signature. The assignee won at trial, where he offered a patent "signed by the governor and countersigned by the secretary of state" (at 481). The supreme court reversed and awarded a new trial (at 481).
  • Holdings.
    1. The purchaser's interest. Once the land was paid for, "nothing remained to be done except the execution by the commissioners of the proper conveyance. In equity he was the full owner, and his interest was as large and permanent as if he had been formally invested with the fee." (At 480.) Because he occupied it as a homestead, he could not convey it without his wife's signature, and the trial court's contrary instruction "was erroneous" (at 480).
    2. The patent. "The court likewise erred" in admitting it. "Under sections 7 and 8 of article X of the constitution, those officers cannot be empowered to execute conveyances of such lands." (At 480.) "The commissioners alone being authorized to convey, the power thus conferred cannot be transferred to others; and the patent, as a conveyance of the legal title, is consequently inoperative and void." (At 481, relying on State ex rel. Crawford v. Hastings, 10 Wis. 525.)
  • The concurrence. Cole, J., joined the reversal on the homestead ground alone. A purchaser in possession under a school-land certificate may hold the land as a homestead "although the fee remains in the state until the patent issues" (at 482). On the patent he expressed no view: "Whether this is so or not, I will not stop to enquire" (at 481).
  • âš  Cite with care.
    • The account of article X, §§ 7 and 8 is the court's paraphrase, not the constitution's text. The held copy's version of the court's sentence on § 8 is damaged by scanning errors and is not quoted here.
    • The held copy does not name the third member of the court or say whether he joined the opinion on the patent. [VERIFY: the court's composition, and the decision date, which the held copy does not print; the catalog record gives April 10, 1861.]
  • → § 3.5.

• State ex rel. Holston v. Commissioners of the Public Lands, 61 Wis. 274, 20 N.W. 915 (1884) (Cole, C.J.).

  • Posture. Mandamus to compel a private sale. The commissioners' return admitted that the lands "had once been offered at public sale, had been sold and forfeited, and had been reoffered at public sale and remain unsold", and that the relator had tendered the purchase money (at 274). The commissioners relied on an order "dated on the 21st day of December, 1880" withdrawing the lands from sale (at 275). The lands lay within the "Indian Reservation", but the commissioners did not defend the order on that ground alone. They claimed that "the statute vests in them a discretionary power of withdrawing the lands from sale when in their opinion it will be for the advantage of the school fund to do so" (at 275).
  • The statutes. Section 207 of the Revised Statutes let the commissioners withhold lands from sale "either before or after advertisement of sale" (at 276). Section 211 made lands once offered and unsold, and forfeited lands reoffered and unsold, "subject to private sale, at the minimum price fixed therefor by law, to the person first making application therefor" (at 276).
  • Holding. "On that question we are clearly of the opinion that the statute vests in them no such power; consequently that the return is insufficient in law." (At 275.) The commissioners decide when lands are first offered, and what to withhold after advertisement. "But there their discretion in the matter ends." (At 276.) When lands "have once been offered at public sale, or have been forfeited and reoffered at such sale, and remain unsold, they are then in the market, and cannot be withdrawn therefrom by the commissioners." (At 277.) "The law gives a party who complies with its conditions the absolute right to enter such lands at private sale." (At 277.)
    • The demurrer to the return was sustained, with leave to amend (at 278). The held copy records that "[a]n application for a peremptory writ was granted November 29, 1884" (at 278).
  • The reason given. "Such a law might open the door to favoritism, or to the imputation of favoritism when impartially administered." If the legislature wanted the commissioners to have the power, "it can so provide." (At 278.)
  • âš  Cite with care.
    • The opinion construes the Revised Statutes and does not mention the constitution. Ten years later Sweet said the constitutional power to withhold "seems not to have been recalled to the mind of the court", and called the decision "a mistake, as to school lands at least" (88 Wis. at 84). It then denied that it had overruled it (at 87). Cite Holston for the statutory scheme, not for the reach of the commissioners' constitutional power.
    • The opinion speaks only of "public lands". It is Sweet that says "[t]he lands involved in that case were school lands" (88 Wis. at 84). Holston records only that the commissioners invoked the advantage of the school fund.
    • The held copy does not print the date of the opinion; the catalog record gives October 14, 1884.
  • → § 3.4; § 3.5; § 9.4.

• State ex rel. Sweet v. Cunningham, 88 Wis. 81, 57 N.W. 1119 (1894) (Newman, J.).

  • Posture. The relators applied on June 5, 1893 to buy certain lands at private sale and sought mandamus to compel the sale. The court framed the question as whether the lands were then subject to private sale. The opinion was filed January 30, 1894, and a motion for a new trial was denied by a second opinion filed May 25, 1894.
  • The state-park statute set aside. A statute, chapter 324 of a year the held copy prints as "18J8", had dedicated the lands to a state park and forbidden their further sale. [VERIFY: the year.] The court said the park law "has very little influence on the question" (at 83), because the legislature could not do what the law attempted.
    • The lands mostly belonged to the school fund. "The school fund is a trust fund, and is placed by the constitution beyond the power of the legislature to divert it to any other use than the support of the schools of the state. It could not set them, or any part of them, apart for a state park." (At 83, citing art. X, § 2, and Lynch v. The Steamer Economy, 27 Wis. 69.)
    • "Neither could it withhold these lands from sale. That power is confided to the discretion of the commissioners of public lands by the constitution, and lies in no other office or body." (At 83, citing art. X, § 8.)
  • The holding. The case was decided on a statute, not on the park law.
    • On February 13, 1883 the commissioners withdrew all public lands from sale. They restored them to market on April 3, 1883. Chapter 222 of the laws of 1885 then provided that lands once withdrawn must, "when re-offered", first be offered at public sale.
    • The court construed the 1885 act as "intended to apply to such lands as had been withdrawn from sale before its passage, and not alone to such as might be withdrawn after its passage" (at 85). The lands here had been withdrawn in 1883 and never re-offered at public sale. "They were not subject to private sale on June 5, 1893." (At 86.) The writ was denied.
  • Why the statute mattered. An earlier decision, State ex rel. Holston v. Commissioners, 61 Wis. 274 (1884) (above), had read the statutes to require that school lands once offered and unsold be sold at private sale "at the minimum price" and not be withdrawn. The constitutional power to withhold "seems not to have been recalled to the mind of the court" there. "It was a mistake, as to school lands at least." (At 84.) The court explained what the withholding power protects: under the Holston reading, "[t]he statute seemed to compel the sale of the public lands, at the minimum price, to the first applicant, regardless of their real value" (at 84). The 1885 act gave the State "a chance to derive advantage from such rise in the value of the public lands as may accrue while they are withheld from market, through competition between rival bidders at a public sale" (at 85).
  • On rehearing. The court denied that it had overruled Holston: "That case was not in point. It in no way conflicts with the decision in this case. What was thought to be an oversight or mistake was pointed out. That is all." (At 87.) It rejected the argument that "withhold" and "withdraw" differ: the lawmakers "intended to give the commissioners the right to decline or refuse to sell the lands" (at 88).
  • âš  Cite with care.
    • The trust-fund and anti-park statements answer the relators' reliance on the park law. The decision rests on the construction of the 1885 act. Cite the case for what the court said about the fund and the commissioners' power, and for the 1885 act as the holding.
    • The legislature keeps a power of its own: "There is no question of the power of the legislature to direct the manner in which the public lands shall be sold." (At 85.) What it may not do is divert the fund, or take over the commissioners' power to withhold.
    • The held copy carries scanning errors, among them "18J8" for the year of the park act. [VERIFY: quotations against the printed reporter; the rehearing's parallel citation, which the 1915 court prints as "59 N. W. 503" at 160 Wis. 95 and as "59 N. W. 508" at 114.]
  • → § 3.3; § 3.4; § 3.5; § 9.4.

• State v. City of Milwaukee, 152 Wis. 228, 138 N.W. 1006 (1912) (Siebecker, J.).

  • Posture. The State sued the city and county of Milwaukee for money they had received as "the clear proceeds of fines collected" and kept for municipal purposes. A first appeal had decided that the action lies (at 231, citing State v. Milwaukee, 145 Wis. 131). The trial court held barred every sum that accrued before February 1, 1899. The State appealed. It argued that the statutes of limitation were not meant to reach a suit for the school fund and, if they were, that they contravened the constitutional provisions creating the fund (at 232).
    • The opinion was filed December 10, 1912 (at 231). Rehearing was denied February 18, 1913 (at 236).
  • The constitutional provision. The court quotes article X, § 2, including the clause that brings into the fund "the clear proceeds of all fines collected in the several counties for any breach of the penal laws" (at 233). The State relied on Sweet: "The school fund is a trust fund, and is placed by the constitution beyond the power of the legislature to divert it to any other use than the support of the schools of the state" (quoted at 233).
  • Holdings.
    1. The constitution does not bar the statutes of limitation. The provision "contains no express prohibition" on the legislature's power over the fund (at 233). "We perceive nothing in the provisions of the constitution that prohibits the legislature from applying limitation statutes to bar recovery by the state of moneys for the benefit of this fund." (At 234.)
    2. The express-trust exception does not apply. The attorney general argued "that the relation of the state to this fund is that of a trustee of an express trust" (at 234). The court answered: "The principle thus invoked applies only in equitable actions between the trustees of an express trust and the cestuis que trustent, which is not the case here. This is an action for a money demand by the state, the trustee, for the benefit of this fund, against a third party, and hence is not within the exception contended for by the state." (At 234.)
    3. No exception for the State's governmental demands. The argument that the limitation statute reaches only demands the State makes in its proprietary capacity "is not well founded" (at 235), following State v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway Co., 132 Wis. 345.
    4. Indiana distinguished. As the court described them, the Indiana decisions rest on a constitution that makes a county holding part of the school fund an express trustee of it, so the State's suit against the county, as beneficiary, was not barred (at 235).
    • The order was affirmed (at 235).
  • âš  Cite with care.
    • The case concerns the State's suit against a third party to collect money owed to the fund. It sets apart, and does not decide, an action between the trustee and the beneficiaries (at 234).
    • The court called the State "the trustee" in describing the action. It did not decide the attorney general's contention that the State holds the fund under an express trust; it held only that the exception he invoked does not reach this kind of action.
    • The held copy is heavily affected by scanning errors ("tbe" for "the"). The passages quoted here are clean in the held copy. Some catalogs date the case 1913, the year rehearing was denied.
  • → § 3.3; § 12.2; § 18.7.

• State ex rel. Owen v. Donald, 160 Wis. 21, 151 N.W. 331 (1915) (Marshall, J.; Winslow, C.J., concurring).

  • The name. The 1915 opinion states no caption. The 1916 accounting report cites it as "State ex rel. Owen v. Donald, 160 Wis. 21" (162 Wis. at 656). Owen was the attorney general and J. S. Donald the secretary of state; both signed the 1916 commissioners' report as Commissioners of Public Lands (162 Wis. at 664). Some catalogs style the case State ex rel. Attorney General v. Donald.
  • Posture. A mandamus proceeding. The attorney general "permitted the use of his official position to enable the state to move, adversary in form, to compel the administration of the forestry laws" (at 99). The court took up the whole forest-reserve scheme, beginning from one land-purchase agreement, "the Sanborn contract so called" (at 62).
    • The scheme set school and other trust lands aside as a permanent forest reserve under a state board of forestry. It was to be enlarged with purchased and tax-deed lands, and it included ascertaining the water powers on the reserve (at 86, 89).
    • A 1910 constitutional amendment had purported to allow appropriations "for the purpose of acquiring, preserving, and developing the water power and the forests of the state" (at 50). The court held that the amendment was never validly adopted and "is no part thereof and does not furnish any support for the proceedings called in question in this case" (at 58).
  • Holdings, from the court's judgment (at 153–56).
    1. The contract. The land contract was void. It created state debt beyond the constitutional limit, it was an evidence of indebtedness the constitution prohibits, it was not authorized by statute, and it fell within the ban on state "works of internal improvement" (at 153).
    2. The forestry legislation. Chapters 740 of 1913 and 491 of 1907 were unconstitutional (at 154). The rest of the scheme stood: "The provisions of the forestry legislation, other than the features mentioned, are valid within limitations stated in the opinion." (At 154.) The court had said it inclined to the view "that the forestry scheme is legitimate in its general features", except as to lumbering operations, diversion of trust-land proceeds to forestry, and unconstitutional disturbance of the commissioners (at 90).
    3. School lands proper. For the lands granted by the United States for schools, the legislature had exceeded its power. The court described the point as conceded (at 93). Those lands are under the commissioners' control, with the legislature's power to regulate disposal "not including withdrawal of the lands from sale, permanently, or at all" (at 94). Applying Sweet, the court said the legislature "cannot devote the same to parks or forests or any purpose inconsistent with the constitutional mandate" (at 95).
    4. Swamp-grant lands set apart for schools. A partition made under an 1865 act divided the swamp-grant lands between drainage and school purposes. The school share was bound by article X, § 2: "Lauds not decided to be needed for sncb primary purposes were automatically beld fast by the secondary trust." (At 114; the held copy's spelling.) But the court decided that the board's constitutional jurisdiction over "school and university lands" "does not include lands in the nature of school lands which were derived from the swamp land grants; that, as to such lands, such commissioners have only such power as the legislature may see fit to delegate to them." (At 119.) The legislature's management must aim at producing money for the school fund. That "leaves a wide field for legislative discretion in respect to withholding the lands from sale and improving the same by reforestation or afforestation" (at 119). The judgment's Fourth paragraph states the rule (at 154).
    5. Remedy. "The state has an equitable lien on the lands included in the illegal contract for the money paid thereon, and such money, equitably, is declared to have been trust money, whereby such lien inures to the benefit of the trust fund property." (At 154.) Lands newly acquired under the forestry law were to be administered as trust-fund lands until a full accounting (at 155). The alternative writ was dismissed, the cause retained, and an accounting ordered. "For the purposes of the accounting the cause is referred to the Commissioners of Public Lands and Judge Samuel D. Hastings as special referee." (At 156.)
  • The trust language. The opinion describes the trust lands as lands that "cannot be dealt with as state property", and says "that they are impressed with a special constitutional trust" (at 117). It does not use "impress" as a noun.
  • The concurrence. Winslow, C.J., joined the judgment but not all of the majority's reasoning (at 157). He agreed that the school funds should be made good by an accounting and a lien, and that the 1865 partition fixed a trust on the school share (at 157). He joined the holdings on chapters 491 and 740 only "[w]ith considerable doubt" (at 158). He objected that the opinion "so limits and circumscribes the powers of the state with regard to afforestation and reforestation that it leaves little more than a shell behind" (at 158). His view was that afforestation is a public purpose for which the State may tax, and is not a work of internal improvement (at 159).
  • âš  Cite with care.
    • Do not cite Donald for the proposition that the legislature can never manage school-fund lands. That is true only of the lands granted by the United States for schools. For the swamp-grant school lands, which were most of the acreage (about 27,160 acres of the first kind against "240,000 or more acres derived from the swamp land grant", at 94), the court held that the legislature controls management.
    • The long discussion of public purpose and the taxing power (at 119–42) is not necessary to the judgment, and the court says so: "If the conclusions already arrived at were different we would have to face the further question next to be settled." (At 119.)
    • The survey of the State's past borrowing from the trust funds, much of it during the Civil War (at 65–68), is also outside the decision. The court said that past policy "is a matter we have nothing to do with in this case" (at 68). The holding on that subject is narrower: the certificates of indebtedness held for the funds "represent state debts, within the meaning of sec. 6, art. VIII, of the constitution" (at 68).
    • The held copy dates only the concurrence, which was "filed February 24, 1915" (at 157). [VERIFY: the date of the court's opinion, and quotations against the printed reporter; the scan is heavily affected by OCR errors ("tbe" for "the").]
  • → § 3.3; § 3.5; § 4.4; § 5.2; § 8.2; § 12.5; § 18.2; § 18.4; § 18.5.

• State ex rel. Owen v. Donald, 162 Wis. 609, 157 N.W. 794 (1916) (the accounting).

  • What it is. Not an opinion. The report prints the special referee's accounting, which "was filed October 7, 1915" (at 609), the commissioners' report, and the court's order "filed April 15, 1916" (at 664). "There are no adversary parties to this proceeding." (At 626.) The referee also had "the duty of deciding questions arising out of facts discovered, not definitely met by the decision because not definitely presented by the facts before the court" (at 611).
  • What the referee found. The general fund was indebted to four constitutional funds: the normal school fund, the school fund, the university fund and the agricultural college fund (at 659–61). "The normal school fund has a lien upon all the lands acquired by the state under the 'forestry law,' either by purchase or by tax deeds, for the full amount of said indebtedness of the general fund to said normal school fund." (At 659; inner quotation marks rendered as single.)
  • What the court did. It confirmed the report's conclusions with modifications. It declined to require sums due the trust funds to be charged against the general fund before the legislature provided for them, and it directed that the trust funds be protected as to income "until the principal shall have been restored by legislative action" (at 664–65).
  • âš  Cite with care.
    • The dollar figures in the held copy do not all reconcile: at least one printed subtotal differs from the sum of its items, and the court's revised normal-school figures do not add. [VERIFY: every figure against the printed reporter before citing any amount.]
    • The referee's reasoning is his own. The court confirmed his conclusions, with changes, not his opinion.
  • → § 12.5; § 18.4; § 18.5.

Authorities identified but not yet held

• Lynch v. The Steamer Economy, 27 Wis. 69. Cited in Sweet at 83 for the trust-fund proposition. Not held. [VERIFY: year.]

• State ex rel. Crawford v. Hastings, 10 Wis. 525; State ex rel. Kennedy v. Brunst, 26 Wis. 412. Cited in Sweet at 83, with McCabe (now held, above), for the commissioners' constitutional power. McCabe relies on Crawford v. Hastings (13 Wis. at 481). Neither is held.

• State v. Milwaukee, 145 Wis. 131, 129 N.W. 1101. The first appeal in the 1912 case, which decided that the State may sue the county and city for fine proceeds they had kept (152 Wis. at 231). Not held. [VERIFY: year.]

• State v. Chicago & Northwestern Railway Co., 132 Wis. 345, 112 N.W. 515. Relied on in the 1912 case for applying the limitation statutes to the State (152 Wis. at 232, 235). Not held. [VERIFY: year.]

• State ex rel. Douglas v. Hastings, 11 Wis. 448. Cited in Donald at 113 on the swamp-land grant. Not held.

• Wisconsin v. Lane, 245 U.S. 427 (1918). Described in the Library's research file as holding that the section-16 grant attached only to lands available under the 1846 act. Not held. [VERIFY before any citation.]

• The rest of the "clear proceeds" line. State v. De Lano, 80 Wis. 259 (1891); State ex rel. Johnson v. Maurer, 159 Wis. 653 (1915); Estate of Payne, 208 Wis. 142 (1932); State ex rel. Commissioners of Public Lands v. Anderson, 56 Wis. 2d 666 (1973). Carried on the Library's state page and Court Atlas. None is held here. State v. City of Milwaukee (1912), above, is the only decision on fine proceeds the Library holds.

• The instruments. The Enabling Act of 1846, § 7; the admission act of 1848; the 1848 Constitution, article X; the current constitution and statutes.

Cross-reference map (section → Wisconsin authority)

What the build found

1. The Court Atlas put a word in quotation marks that Donald does not use. The Library's Wisconsin Court Atlas said that in Donald "constitutional dedication creates an 'impress' of trust the legislature cannot ignore", and that the case "[e]xtended Sweet". The noun "impress" does not appear in the opinion; the court's words are "impressed with a special constitutional trust" (at 117). What Donald extended to the swamp-grant school lands was the article X money trust. It declined to extend Sweet's rule about the commissioners' control to them (at 119). The Court Atlas entry is corrected in this pass.

2. Sweet was decided on a statute. Descriptions of Sweet often say it "held" that school lands could not be made a state park. The court said so, in answering the relators' reliance on the park law, and the statement is accurate. The holding that decided the case is the construction of the 1885 act. This entry keeps the two apart.

3. Holston is as Sweet described it. With the 1884 opinion now held, its text bears out Sweet's account: it construes the Revised Statutes and never mentions the constitution. One detail rests on Sweet alone. Holston speaks only of "public lands"; Sweet says they were school lands (88 Wis. at 84).

4. The protection of fine proceeds has a limit. The Library's Wisconsin pages describe the "clear proceeds" cases as protecting the school fund's claim to fines and forfeitures against legislative diversion. Milwaukee (1912) held that applying the general statutes of limitation to the State's suit for those proceeds is not such a diversion (at 234). No published page says otherwise; this entry adds the limit.

Appendix A — Wisconsin, v2, revised September 30, 2026. Built against the Wisconsin Supreme Court opinions held in the Library's collection, each read in full:

• McCabe v. Mazzuchelli, 13 Wis. 478 (1861)
• State ex rel. Holston v. Commissioners of the Public Lands, 61 Wis. 274, 20 N.W. 915 (1884)
• State ex rel. Sweet v. Cunningham, 88 Wis. 81, 57 N.W. 1119 (1894)
• State v. City of Milwaukee, 152 Wis. 228, 138 N.W. 1006 (1912)
• State ex rel. Owen v. Donald, 160 Wis. 21, 151 N.W. 331 (1915), majority and concurrence
• State ex rel. Owen v. Donald, 162 Wis. 609, 157 N.W. 794 (1916)

Items the primaries cannot establish carry a [VERIFY] flag rather than an assertion.