Recusal Standards: A Partial Solution to Judicial Mess

by mal contends

Public financing, education, and aggressive journalism point the way out of the unholy mess the election of Wisconsin Supreme Court justices has become.

So bad is Wisconsin that we are now a poster child for a nationwide problem with electing judges.

Another part of the solution proposed is more aggressive recusal rules, negating the rationale behind buying a Supreme Court seat.

From the Brennan Center for Justice's Justice Under Seige:

... Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, ... (Wisconsin's) largest business lobby, helped kick Justice Louis Butler—Wisconsin's first and only black Supreme Court Justice—off the bench. ... Moneyed groups spending millions, effectively buying seats on state judicial benches, is not just grist for John Grisham's latest bestseller, it's part of a national trend recently highlighted by a Brennan Center op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

This morning's New York Times picks up the torch from the nationwide problem identified by the Brennan Center:

(S)pecial interests are finding that buying up judges likely to side with them in big-dollar cases is a good investment — the real-life grist for John Grisham’s new fictional legal thriller, 'The Appeal.”'

Events this month in Wisconsin and West Virginia only deepen these concerns. On April 1, the first and only African-American member of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Louis Butler, lost his seat after a nasty, racially charged campaign in which his opponent, Michael Gableman, was aided by a barrage of TV advertising, paid for by the state’s largest business lobby…

In response to such travesties, judicial reformers have stepped up their call for public financing and strict fund-raising rules for state judicial contests or a switch to a nonelective merit selection system.

But with states in no rush to make these changes, a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice smartly focuses on an effective if less sweeping antidote that would be more achievable in the short-term: persuading jurisdictions to strengthen their recusal rules.

Surely special interests would be less inclined to invest so heavily in judicial elections if they knew the recipients of their largess likely would be barred from sitting on their cases.

Public financing, education, aggressive journalism and stronger recusal rules: That's sounds like a sensible start. I wonder if Fraley, Sykes, Belling, et al will go along.