April 17, 2008

Appointing Judges a Supremely Bad Idea 

By James H. Miller

The last year and a half has been a political horror show for liberal elites in Wisconsin. Given the nature of the Bush presidency it seems almost impossible that Republicans could stumble onto the one issue on which they can still win elections - crime. For the left it has been a stunning revelation. A year ago it was Annette Ziegler, then in November, against all odds during a Democratic tsunami, Republican J.B. Van Hollen was elected Attorney General. And now the Wisconsin Supreme Court has gone to the right. The angst and the rage are hardly unexpected. Now, faced with an inability to win judicial elections, the left, aided by the media, has decided to do everything they can to change the rules.

One recent observation that I found amusing was the idea that electing judges results in well-qualified lawyers not seeking judgeships. Too bad. Judges are part of an industry, the legal industry. It is set up by lawyers, for lawyers, and to benefit only lawyers. Over the last several years the legal profession has learned that Wisconsin voters and taxpayers have a different view of the world than they do. Lawyers believe that they have an entitlement to run the judicial system any way they see fit. When Annette Ziegler was elected, one of the first reactions was to form a committee to dictate what you could and could not do in a campaign for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The names for that committee were hardly pulled out of a hat. They were part of the Madison establishment, liberal to a fault, that represented no more than the several people who were actually on the committee. Yet during the past year, the media treated these people as if they were actually important. They were not. They simply represented the self-interest of the legal profession in getting to dictate who gets to be a judge. The only better taxpayer-funded job in the United States than a judge is a tenured academic. Being a judge is more than a political plum; it comes with money, trappings and a work schedule that would only exhaust a professor.

Yet the core of the problem is that the public has decided that they, and not lawyers, should decide who becomes a Wisconsin judge. This, of course, is something that the left has convinced the media must change. If the elections over the past several years were producing liberal victories, we would not be hearing any of these nonsensical ideas like eliminating election of our Supreme Court judges, or using public money for judicial elections. It simply drives the left crazy that voters associate judges with political ideologies. And why shouldn’t they? Why are judges considered so special in this day and age? The argument is that judges are nonpartisan and deal with facts and should be shielded from the political machinations of the rest of our elected officials. In fact, that is nonsense. Judges have always been involved in the politics of our country since the days of John Jay and John Marshall.

In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court has tilted left for the last decade. By judicial fiat they have challenged laws and policies approved by elected officials in our Legislature. In the recent Supreme Court election we were told by the media that Michael Gableman was unfit to be elected to our Supreme Court. Yet no one pointed out that Louis Butler came with some serious baggage. To begin with he was selected by the Governor to become a Supreme Court justice. That was after the voters had rejected him by a 2-to-1 margin when he tried to run for the office. He was deemed to be experienced because he sat on the court, but his supporters never mentioned his background. There was no question that the actual election was not the so-called dignified race that we have been told in the past you should have for the judiciary, nor should it have been. Louis Butler lost the election because of one ad and one ad only; the one where he was described as “Loophole Louie.” That advertisement focused on his background when he had been a public defender in Milwaukee. Simply put, he was a liberal, but no judge ever runs for office bogged down by that description of his ideology. Voters had the right to know his background, and, as they had in the past, decided he wasn’t the person for them on Wisconsin’s highest court.

Now we are being hit with two new proposals. The first is to disenfranchise voters by having the Governor select the Supreme Court justices. Well, that is how we got Butler and the majority of voters in Wisconsin thought it was a terrible idea. By the way, this is an idea that will have no support if a Republican is elected governor. The second idea is using taxpayer money for the elections. There is no support in the state to use public funds for elections – check previous polls and income tax check-offs if you disagree.

There is no reason why judges should not answer to the public the same way that other elected officials do. They are around for ten years and they can affect everyone’s life throughout Wisconsin. Just in case anyone forgets, there is still another statewide Supreme Court election next April. Does anyone think that Shirley Abrahamson is a safe incumbent now?