Gavel Grab

The Wisconsin Supreme Court may finalize rules Thursday governing whether justices must step aside from hearing cases involving campaign supporters, and a state newspaper is urging the court to “come to its senses” when it acts.

The Wisconsin court voted in October to adopt new rules declaring that campaign donations to justices will not require them to recuse themselves from cases involving a supporter, but the court still must  issue a written order to make the rules effective. On the eve of possible action, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel urged adoption of a “reasonable rule:”

“The issue is whether Supreme Court justices will be perceived as just your common ordinary politician, thought to be willing to dance with the folks whose big money brought them to the ball.”

The editorial urged a new rule that “will allow constituents to trust  without reservation and that recognizes our voters are not fools.”

The court’s recusal policy, passed in a 4-3 vote on Oct. 28, declared that a judge should “never” recuse solely on the basis that a litigant had financially supported his or her election. It was based on separate petitions submitted by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that large campaign expenditures could create an unacceptable potential for bias, and it said a West Virginia justice should step aside from a case involving a coal company executive who had spent $3 million to help the justice win election.

An article in The AM Law Daily discusses the disparity between the apparent approach in Wisconsin and the Michigan Supreme Court’s approach in responding to that landmark case. The latter took a more restrictive approach, permitting a majority of Michigan Supreme Court justices to disqualify one of their own from hearing a case, in the event of an apparent bias or conflict of interest.

You may read more about the recusal debate in Wisconsin by clicking here for Gavel Grab stories, or about Michigan’s rule by clicking here; you can learn more about the U.S. Supreme Court case, Caperton v. Massey, by reading these Gavel Grab posts.