Enforcing a requirement that public money be spent for a "public purpose", American state courts have uniformly ruled that governmental expenditures for private purposes were invalid. Part I of this article examines two aspects of the doctrine as it appears in Wisconsin: (1) the transformation by the judiciary of the doctrine from a concept of political morality to a part of the constitutional law of Wisconsin; and (2) the impact of judicial decisions based on the doctrine on the functioning of the older branches of the Wisconsin government. Part II of this article analyzes the decisions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court which relied on the doctrine to invalidate legislative or administrative actions.
