Make impartial justice an election issue
Wisconsinites have their attention firmly focused on the 2008 presidential race. So it is easy to forget that a state Supreme Court contest will be held next spring.
That contest, in which Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson will seek a new 10-year term, may not garner comparable attention to that accorded this fall's presidential race. But it could be a turning point election in the state's history, and we all need to be ready for it.
Wisconsinites who are disgusted by the excessive spending and even more excessive negativity of the presidential race -- and we suspect that includes just about everyone -- well recognize that the pathologies of presidential politics are beginning to define competition for the state's highest court bench.
The spring 2008 Supreme Court contest between former Justice Louis Butler and challenger Michael Gableman was so unsettling that it made national news -- earning mention on the front page of the New York Times. Gableman and his special-interest allies ran an ugly, racialized campaign against Butler, Wisconsin's first African-American justice, and their disregard for the truth garnered condemnation from far and wide.
Unfortunately, in a low-turnout election, Gableman prevailed, and he now sits on the court.
That's embarrassing, even disturbing. But it is not nearly as unsettling as the response of some elite institutions in Wisconsin to the 2008 judicial race and its result.
The Wisconsin State Journal has been campaigning, in conjunction with a handful of political and legal insiders, to take away the right of Wisconsinites to elect Supreme Court justices. The theory of the State Journal and its allies is that the voters are to blame for everything that ails our electoral processes.
This convoluted calculus, if taken to its extreme, would eliminate elections altogether -- replacing them with a sort of meritocracy that owes more to King George than George Washington.
It is important to cut through the spin from those who don't trust the people and get to the reality of what can and should be done to repair our judicial elections.
Eliminating elections for the Supreme Court and replacing them with a merit selection system -- in which legal and political insiders would choose top judges while citizens sit on the sidelines -- does not get special-interest groups out of the process. It give the process over to those who are most likely to do the bidding of interested organizations and individuals.
That was the message delivered recently by Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack when she addressed the Common Cause in Wisconsin board. Roggensack, who was accompanied by Justices Patrick Crooks and Ann Walsh Bradley, told the board that she opposed moving to a system of appointing justices because that shift would break with Wisconsin's long tradition of electing its Supreme Court and because of her fear that the appointment process would prove to be far more political than the election process.
Crooks and Bradley echoed Roggensack's view on the need to maintain an elected judiciary.
The justices, who represent the various ideological camps on the court, also agreed with Roggensack's call a public financing system in order to reform judicial races in Wisconsin. The justices argued, as does E. Michael McCann, the former longtime Milwaukee County district attorney who has taken a lead on reform issues, that infusions of undisclosed special-interest money into recent Supreme Court elections has damaged the court's reputation and fostered the public perception that justice could be for sale in Wisconsin, even if this is not the case.
Moving to a system of appointing justices would do nothing to improve the reputation of the court. In fact, a so-called "merit selection" system would cause Wisconsinites to see the state's top bench as an elite, insider-dominated institution --ndsh rather than the people's court.
Justices Roggensack, Crooks and Bradley are right: Only a sound system of public financing of judicial campaigns, along with tight rules regarding the disclosure of the sources of funding for independent campaigns associated with judicial elections, will restore the reputation of the court.
Reform can still come before the 2009 election.
The Wisconsin Legislature could, in special session, enact the "impartial justice" legislation that has already been proposed. If this was done before the circulation of nomination papers by Supreme Court candidates is set to begin in December, reforms could be implemented in time for the February primary and the April general election.
We recognize that the Legislature and governor have already avoided opportunities to implement real reforms, so we do not hold much hope for an immediate fix.
But Wisconsinites can move the repair work forward this fall. When talking with legislative candidates, citizens should make their concerns about the sorry state of judicial elections known. They should ask whether contenders favor public funding of judicial elections, and whether they will make implementation of such a program a priority. If candidates seem uninterested -- or if they start talking about gimmicks such as "merit selection" -- look elsewhere.
The 2008 election is supposed to be about "change we can believe in."
Public financing of judicial elections is change all Wisconsinites can believe in.
And we should vote in November for candidates who share that belief.
File photo
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack wants a public financing system in order to reform judicial races in Wisconsin.
