This sage saga continues as Wisconsin Public Radio reports on the status of the investigation in an interview with Howard Schweber, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Secondly, Schweber said, the Wisconsin Supreme Court plays a primary role in the investigation.
“The claim is that Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, primarily, unlawfully engaged in campaign coordination with Gov. Walker,” said Schweber. “Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce made and funneled major contributions not only to Walker, but to the current sitting justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”
This puts the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an unusual position, according to Schweber.
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court has some of the loosest rules in the entire country, allowing its justices to rule on cases involving major campaign contributors,” he said. “Those rules, allowing the justices to preside over the case, were written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and approved by the current sitting justices. The corruption of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court has reached a point of absolute nadir.”
BloombergPolitics updates with the news that SCOTUS won’t stop the investigation:
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to end a state investigation into Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s 2012 recall campaign, rejecting an appeal from a conservative group that says its constitutional rights are being violated.
The rebuff leaves the future of the investigation in the hands of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is considering a separate bid to stop the probe. The criminal investigation, on hold during the court fight, might complicate Walker’s potential campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
Pema Levy at Mother Jones has a lengthier report on the history of how the formerly august Wisconsin Supreme Court has been made into a laughingstock:
The Wisconsin Club for Growth and WMC first began pouring millions into state Supreme Court elections in 2007, when the groups spent an estimated $2.9 million on ads backing conservative candidate Annette Ziegler for an open seat on the Supreme Court and attacking her opponent. Total spending on that election topped $5.8 million, four times the previous record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The following year, the same groups spent more than $2.7 million on ads aimed at unseating sitting Justice Louis Butler, a liberal, and electing conservative candidate Michael Gableman. The election was so nasty that racially-tinged ads released by Gableman’s campaign were compared to the infamous Willie Horton spot from the 1988 presidential election.
The partisanship and massive interest-group spending of the 2007 and 2008 state Supreme Court elections spurred Wisconsin lawmakers to take action. In 2009, the Legislature passed the Impartial Justice Act, setting up a robust campaign finance system for Supreme Court elections, including a matching funds provision to help candidates counter negative ads run against them. But in 2011, Walker quietly repealed the public financing law with language tucked into his first budget as governor.
The New Yorker also has a fine article. PR Watch notes the numbers:
In every single one of the most recent elections for the court’s four Republican justices — Justices David Prosser, Michael Gableman, Annette Ziegler, and Patience Roggensack — spending by WiCFG, its surrogates, and WMC amounted to almost all of the independent support for the candidate. Together, the two groups and their surrogates have spent over $10 million since 2007 helping elect the court’s four-justice conservative majority, in most cases spending more than the candidates themselves. Some of the elections were decided by just a handful of votes.
The total spent by the groups under investigation is higher than previously estimated, based on new documents obtained from WMC.
For those interested in a more in depth look at spending on judicial elections, there’s The New Politics of Judicial Elections Online.
PuddyTat @ The Daily Kos covers the change to the Wisconsin Constitution:
A very heavily promoted and propagandized Constitutional amendment recently passed in Wisconsin changing the selection of the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Since the Court was founded in 1852, the most senior Justice has automatically become the Chief Justice. With the newly passed amendment, the Chief Justice will now be elected by members of the State Supreme Court – a move designed to ensure that a RW Justice will become Chief, replacing liberal Shirley Abrahamson who has served as a Justice for the past 39 years and became the most senior member, therefore Chief Justice, in 1996.
Last week, as soon as the passage of the amendment was certified, the 4 RW justices of the State Supreme Court voted by email to make Justice Patience Roggensack their Chief Justice. The 3 liberal/moderate justices weren’t even consulted or notified.
PuddyTat continues with another post detailing more amateur-hour antics. Finally, the Urban Milwaukee‘s Bruce Murphy goggles at the circus:
There was something unseemly about Supreme Court Justice Patience (Pat) Roggensack contacting state legislators and urging them to support a constitutional amendment that would allow members of the court to elect the chief justice. Court watchers assumed such a vote would result in Roggensack’s selection, so her lobbying looked Shakespearean, the younger justice looking to kill the queen.
It also contrasted with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, who served based on having the longest tenure on the court and now stood to be displaced, yet desisted from lobbying, saying: “My position is that it is important not to politicize the court.” …
Roggensack could have simply contacted the paper and let them know she was abiding by the will of the people and hoped her colleague would accept this democratic outcome. Instead, the obviously miffed justice rushed to talk on air with incendiary radio host Charlie Sykes and quickly attacked both Abrahamson and the Journal Sentinel!
“I intend to work with people on a consensus basis, rather than a dictatorial basis,” Roggensack told Sykes, in an obvious dig at Abrahamson. Just one week earlier, Roggensack said her key task as chief justice was “to begin repairing damage that has been done to the reputation of the Wisconsin Supreme Court,” and so she does this by sullying her fellow justice, and letting the world know the bickering on the court is not about to stop.
Looks like our friends in Wisconsin have had the wool pulled firmly over their eyes. Gotta wonder how long it’ll stay there…
