Supreme Court has chance to still get it right on recusal
It was painful Oct. 28 to watch the Wisconsin Supreme Court reject the League of Women Voters’ proposal to require judges to withdraw from cases where one party has spent $1,000 or more to put the judge in office. A majority of high court justices voted to adopt word-for-word the recommendations of two powerful business associations who proposed that campaign contributions and electioneering ads never be cause for recusal.
It was still more painful last week to watch the justices revisit the issue. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson called the Court into open administrative conference to deal with amendments that have been proposed since the adoption of the new rules. The Wisconsin Supreme Court usually adopts new rules in principle, leaving open the opportunity to modify the language before the final rule is approved.
However, the majority in October rejected suggestions for flexibility and adopted the rules verbatim as proposed by the Wisconsin Realtors Association (WRA) and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC). That may have been more than even the petitioners were bargaining for.
WMC later submitted an amendment to the rule it had proposed, which dealt with independent expenditures related to a judicial campaign. WMC recommended rewording to make the language consistent with that of the Realtors’ rule, which dealt with campaign contributions. In addition, Justice David Prosser proposed other amendments. He asserted that the proposed changes would not alter the substance of the rules, but other justices were not so sure of that.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley read a sharp dissenting statement co-signed by Justices Abrahamson and N. Patrick Crooks, saying they never would have adopted a proposal verbatim from powerful lobbying interests. To demonstrate the effect of the Court’s rash decision, she read headlines from newspapers decrying the Oct. 28 decision.
The whole point of recusal standards is to protect not only the impartiality but also the credibility of our courts. You can’t do that by letting moneyed lobbying interests write the rules. Abrahamson asked Prosser several times if he no longer supported verbatim adoption of the WMC and WRA rules, and eventually he agreed that he was retracting his earlier vote. This resulted in a majority vote to rescind the Oct. 28 decision. Abrahamson announced that the Oct. 28 order would not be published and asked Prosser to circulate his recommendations to the full Court by the end of the week.
The Court has a chance to take the time to do this right. Justice Crooks asked all of the speakers on Oct. 28 what they thought of the idea of having a committee study the recusal issue and make recommendations to the Court within a few weeks. The League of Women Voters and most of the others supported this.
We still do, and we also support Crooks’ recommendation that any amendments should receive proper notice and have a hearing before being adopted. Nobody said democracy is easy. It requires constant care and feeding. But it’s worth it.
Melanie G. Ramey is president of The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin Education Fund. It is a member of Community Shares of Wisconsin. For more information about the league, go to lwvwi.org.
Dec 17, 2009 at 2:11 p.m.
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The phase "bitter grapes" expresses bitterness towards a result or set of circumstances and is commonly used as a basis for an argument rather than simply an innocuous comment. What are you REALLY trying to say RAF?
Dec 15, 2009 at 6:44 p.m.
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Well...thanks for clearing THAT up....
Dec 15, 2009 at 2 a.m.
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My comment was provided as a comment, not an argument...irrespective of the ruling, this sounds like sour grapes; you don't have to like it.
Dec 14, 2009 at 9:50 p.m.
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RAF--I guess I would expect your comment; there is virtually nothing substantive you could write to support the original ruling of the WI.S.Ct. They ignored the recent U.S.S.Ct. holding on the issue, and voted lock stock and barrel to support the organizations that purchased two of them to begin with. You usually have better arguments.
Dec 14, 2009 at 2:05 p.m.
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What does the Wisconsin Realtors Association (WRA) and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) know about ethical law conduct and recusal issues? Those two organizations have the most to lose and the most to gain depending on which rules are adopted, since they combined to contribute over 1 million dollars to the winning candidates in the past two elections. The justices completely rejected any suggestions from the League of Women Voters of WI and former Justice Bill Bablitch, each of whom submitted proposals that had rules requiring judges to “recuse” themselves from cases involving campaign contributors who had given more than a predetermined amount. Is there anything inherently unfair about that proposal? The new rules, written by the WRA and WMC say campaign spending and endorsements alone aren't enough to require justices to step aside. The justices adopted the rules written by the WRA and WMC “word for word” So, if you brought a case against either the WRA or WMC, do you believe you’d receive a fair hearing? The United States Supreme Court doesn’t think so either. The ruled a judge who had received a large donation from a coal company must recuse himself from any legal proceeding involving that company. Seems fair to me!
The state's longstanding ethical code for judges says they must recuse themselves if their impartiality can reasonably be questioned. Now the justices want to do away with that portion of the code. Sounds like Gableman and Ziegler are activist judges making new rules as they go with help from those who paid for their seat on the court. WI Supreme Court Justice campaign reform should eliminate voting and leave the decision to a non-partisan commission made up of former judges. Those seeking a seat on the court would submit their name for consideration and the commission would make the choice. Justice on the current WI Supreme Court has been compromised.
Dec 14, 2009 at 5:55 a.m.
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So the article is sour grapes from the person who heads the organization that brought it up and lost.
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