The Chicago Tribune Takes the Bait
July 28, 2008
The Chicago Tribune had a thumbsucker over the weekend on the politicization of America’s judiciary that pushed the usual storyline: Americans are “largely clueless” about the judiciary, providing an opening for “special interest lobbies” to have undue influence over the judicial selection process. The recent election defeat of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler serves as the jumping off point, so let’s take a look at that race.
The Tribune darkly suggests that Justice Butler owes his defeat to “outside interest groups” that wanted to “tilt the ideological makeup of the court.” But in fact it was the appointment of Butler – a liberal activist judge who took it upon himself to try to rewrite Wisconsin tort law – that shifted the court’s direction.
In a recent report on the race – “Don’t Blame the Voters for the Ugly Election for the High Court” published by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute – Charles Sykes writes that Butler was appointed over the objections of Wisconsin voters:
Butler was appointed to the job after having been explicitly rejected by the voters. [Gov.] Doyle named him to the high court despite and quite possibly in open defiance of the verdict of the electorate in 2000, when Butler lost a race for the seat by a 2-to-1 margin. In effect, Doyle’s appointment (which required no confirmation by any elected or unelected body) overturned the clear results of the election.
Upon joining the high court, Sykes continues, Butler wasted no time pushing his personal agenda:
When Butler came on the court in 2004, he and other members of the newly-created liberal majority could have been cautious and incrementalist in their rulings. Instead, they moved hard left, aggressively ignoring precedent and substituting their judgment for legislative decisions and acting as a “super-legislature.” On issues ranging from crime to tort litigation, the court’s sweeping departures from past practices drew national attention, and ultimately changed the nature of elections for justices.
When judges start acting like politicians, they should not be surprised when judicial races become more political. Writes Sykes:
The fault here lies not with the public or even the “interest groups,” but rather with the justices themselves. When judges act like politicians, the judicial selection process – elected or appointed – becomes increasingly political. Action and reaction. The politicization of the court led to the politicization of the elections for justices.
When justices arrogate political policymaking to themselves, they should not be surprised when they are held to the same standards as politicians …. By acting as super-legislators and super-governors, they transformed elections for the court into the sorts of campaigns associated with heated contests for legislative seats and the governor’s chair.
The Tribune’s reporter, Tim Jones, also fell for the old line that groups like Justice at Stake, the Brennan Center and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign are just non-partisan watchdogs. In fact, as I’ve pointed out many times, these groups are part of a highly-coordinated, well-funded campaign financed by hedge fund billionaire George Soros to end the democratic right to vote for judges in states across the country and give that power to a tiny, unelected, unaccountable commission of legal elites. If the Tribune believes that lawyers ought to pick judges instead of voters, they should just say so; but they shouldn’t deceive their readers by credulously repeating the non-partisan claims of groups with deeply partisan agendas.