Former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis B. Butler, Jr., remains Exhibit A in the drive to protect voters’ rights in state judicial elections.
After losing an election to the high court by a whopping two-to-one margin in 2000, Mr. Butler managed to finally secure a place for himself on the bench through an appointment by Gov. […]

Earlier this year, Rick Esenberg, a visiting assistant professor of law at Marquette University Law School and a member of the Federalist Society wrote an important report called “Everyone’s Business: Emerging Issues in the Wisconsin Supreme Court” that analyzed issues such as financing for public education, the definition of marriage under Wisconsin’s constitutional amendment […]

Charles Sykes just came out with a terrific new report – “Don’t Blame the Voters for the Ugly Election for the High Court” – published by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. Sykes neatly shreds every argument in favor of ending judicial elections.
Read the whole report, but here are a few highlights:

“But most of the […]

Democracy is doomed in Wisconsin! The state’s “once proud reputation as a haven for and leader in honest, clean, accountable state government” is in tatters! Wisconsin politics is now a “cesspool!”
That grim verdict was delivered by Jay Heck, director of Common Cause in Wisconsin via an oped in The Capital Times. Why? […]

Mr. Thomas J. Basting, Sr. is the president of the Wisconsin state bar and creator of something that calls itself the “Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee.”
Basting begins a piece in Wisconsin Lawyer with the customary throat-clearing of a high-minded, impartial observer, who intones that this time he is casting off his famous impartiality, to throw […]

An editorial in The Capital Times – Wisconsin’s “progressive” daily – blasts proposals to have a secret panel of lawyers (instead of voters) decide who sits on state benches. Their most withering comments were trained on former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has jumped into the fray by proposing that Wisconsin abolish the democratic […]

Wisconsin’s “progressive” newspaper – The Capital Times weighs in with an editorial slamming merit selection. Money quote:
… elite newspapers and organizations are proposing the replacement of an elected judiciary with a bench filled by political appointees. This so-called “merit selection” of judges blames the citizens for warping the process and suggests voters ought […]

Comments continue on the decision by Wisconsin voters to oust liberal activist Louis Butler from the state Supreme Court.
In an oped last week, Maureen Martin of the Heartland Institute points out that Butler’s appointment to the court came only after he lost his own bid for election by nearly 2:1. As a […]

Great little letter in the Wall Street Journal today about the decision of Wisconsin voters to throw out trial-lawyer supported justice on the state Supreme Court recently. Here’s an excerpt:
My oldest son turned 18 last year and was excited to be able to vote in his first election. His question to me was, “Who […]

Even the venerable Economist can fall prey to some Justice At Stake propaganda. In its latest issue, The Economist denounced American judicial elections as prone to “unbecoming hoopla.” With typical Economist wit, it looked at the political ads in some of these races as so much Habeas circus, and wondered why we Yanks […]