More on Wisconsin’s Recusal Standards
January 22, 2010
Our friends over at Justice at Stake and the Brennan Center are huffing and puffing because the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided not to adopt a recusal standard proposed by special interest groups that would have triggered an automatic recusal in any case in which a litigant had made a $1,000 campaign contribution. Instead, the Wisconsin high court ruled that campaign “donations, endorsements or independent spending around elections are not enough to force judges off cases.”
JAS and Brennan believe the decision is in “clear conflict” with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Caperton ruling. I guess we’ll find that out during the litigation scrum that is sure to follow. What is abundantly clear is that recusal standards have become a back door way for special interest groups to try to limit the influence of citizens over judicial selection and shape the court to their own ideological ends.
In Wisconsin, the process heated up after voters unceremoniously dumped former liberal Justice Louis Butler. Since then, special interest groups have failed to replace democratic judicial elections with “merit” selection – where lawyers, rather than voters, choose judges. Now they’ve failed in an attempt to use recusal standards to hinder the ability of voters to exercise their First Amendment rights by contributing to the candidates of their choosing.
Those First Amendment rights got another boost yesterday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations (or labor unions for that matter, “are entitled to the same right that individuals have to spend money on political speech for or against a candidate.”
I can already hear the predictable howls of protest that corporations will now be free to “buy” any public office they want, including judgeships. The proposed solution will be just as predictable: Instead of having gullible, easily misled voters pick judges, let’s turn the job over to a small group of elites – all of whom, it goes without saying, are smarter than mere citizens anyway.
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Judicial Elections, Wisconsin
One Response to “More on Wisconsin’s Recusal Standards”
[...] weeks ago, the Wisconsin Supreme Court stopped such an effort in its tracks when it refused to adopt a rule that proposed automatic recusal in any case in which a litigant had made a $1,000 campaign [...]