Wisconsin Supreme Court Withdraws Earlier Vote on Recusal Rules
Fair Courts E-lert
Bibliographic Info:
Author: Alex De Grand
Source: State Bar of Wisconsin
Date: 12/7/2009
On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court withdrew its controversial 4-3 vote, taken on October 28, 2009, to “adopt – as written – . . . petition[s] amending the Code of Judicial Conduct so that the receipt of a campaign contribution or an independent expenditure by a party to the proceedings does not require a judge’s recusal.” The Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce had filed the petitions, but after the court’s majority accepted both petitions verbatim, the groups filed a letter in November “seeking amended language to resolve the two petitions’ inconsistent terminology.” What initially seemed (in the words of Justice David Prosser) a question of mere “fine tuning” became more complicated when it appeared that at least one justice in the majority was unfamiliar with portions of the petitions it had originally accepted without reservation. Ultimately, “given the significance of the changes, [Justice] Prosser informed the court he had to withdraw the vote he cast with Justices Patience Roggensack, Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman in favor of the two petitions.” The court has been hounded by controversy for its fractious October vote by editorial boards across the state, prompting Justice Patience Drake Roggensack to explain why she sided with the majority in an op-ed for the Wisconsin State Journal published three days before the court’s October vote was withdrawn. In her op-ed, Justice Roggensack wrote that she “voted for the rule because of my concern that the citizens who elected justices were in danger of having their votes for judicial candidates canceled, solely due to another person’s lawful contribution or due to an independent advertisement over which the justice had no control.”
See also Patrick Marley, Bradley Reads Dissent Before Recusal Rule is Set, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, December 7, 2009. Video coverage of the Wisconsin Supreme Court Open Conference is available at the Wisconsin Eye.