Opinion
Highest court deserves higher standard
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Also by Alec Slocum:
- Reasons for code changes fall short (April 27, 2009)
- Will activist ASM serve all campus? (April 13, 2009)
- Grade inflation threatens value (March 30, 2009)
- Budget forces truth-in-sentencing reform (March 10, 2009)
- Microfinancing new avenue for foreign aid (February 23, 2009)
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Believe it or not, free and fair elections may not always be the answer.
Last Monday Randy Koschnick, a Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge, announced he will challenge seated Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson for her place on the bench of Wisconsin’s highest court. In what likely seemed the same breath, Koschnick proclaimed he was a “judicial conservative,” and attacked the liberal bloc of “activist judges.” In repeating this grossly inaccurate but politically rewarding characterization, Koschnick assured any skeptical observer our next state Supreme Court election will indeed follow directly in the footsteps of the previous two, which gained national attention for their corrosive effect on the stature of our judicial system. Once again, the voters of Wisconsin will decide the composition of our state’s highest court based on partisanship and politics, rather than qualifications and merits.
What should make the selection of Supreme Court Justices different from members of the Legislature comes down to the fundamental purpose they serve in a democratic government. While the Legislature is intended to act as a hired hand for the majority, the state Supreme Court serves only to interpret and enforce the respective laws of the state as well as the state and federal constitutions, regardless of what popular opinion thinks about it. In electing justices, we risk convoluting these distinct roles and in so doing, opening the door to what critics of democracy said would cause it to fail and friends feared it would produce — a tyranny of the majority.
Thus, in order to serve its purpose effectively, the judiciary needs to be insulated from the popular will, rather than made accountable to it.
While electing justices in the first place is bad enough, what makes the situation in Wisconsin even worse is the electorate’s utter inability to identify and focus on issues of actual concern to a sitting member of the Supreme Court. If the most recent Supreme Court races are any indication (I can’t imagine what would be a better indication), voters are mostly concerned with whether “Loophole Louie” allowed a “rapist to go free” by defending a man’s constitutional rights as a public defender, and whether Annette Ziegler was “soft on sexual offenders” by refusing to put them in solitary confinement for the remainder of their lowly existences (that may have been a slight exaggeration). Neither of these cases displays scenarios that would be dealt with more than rarely at the state Supreme Court level. So, not only are we exposing these justices to the popular will, we are exposing them to a grossly negligent and uninformed popular will. The electorate’s love for crime control models championed by television and movies, and misplaced hatred for “loopholes” is blinding them with partisanship and resulting in the neglect of careful consideration of relevant qualifications and merits necessary in justices.
The final nail in the coffin of Supreme Court elections is the fact that there is no hope for the discourse of these campaigns to improve. The candidates’ campaigns were outspent nearly 10-1 in television advertising in last year’s Supreme Court election by outside groups who know how to exploit the minimal knowledge our electorate has regarding the legal system. Neither the relative knowledge of the electorate nor that kind of outside spending is going to change in the near future, and thus, neither will the dialogue.
Luckily, alternative methods of judicial selection are available. One such alternative system is to mirror the federal selection process by having the governor appoint the justices. However, given that only 6 percent of Wisconsin residents favored gubernatorial selection according to a recent statewide poll, it is likely best to look elsewhere.
The other proven alternative is “merit-selection,” in which a non-partisan commission composed of public officials, bar association officers and private citizens nominates a small group of qualified candidates to an appointing authority (likely the governor) who approves one of the suggested candidates. The selected justice then continues to come before the commission for re-approval after certain allotments of time.
Merit selection offers the opportunity to skip the corrupting influence of fundraising, attack ads and the uninformed electorate inherent in elections, as well as the absolutist partisan politics commonly prevalent in gubernatorial appointment, and focus to a greater extent on the merits and qualifications of possible justices.
It is, quite plainly, our state’s best option, and the only viable way to ensure the integrity of our state’s highest court — a goal worthy of top priority. In order to accomplish this, the change to a system of merit selection needs to be made sooner rather than later.
Alec Slocum (awslocum@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in philosophy and legal studies.
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Mr. Slocum, you clearly know nothing of the law. Your juvenile defense of child rape reveals you don’t understand the founding principles of our nation’s highest institution of integrity and morality. Morality, as Socrates would proudly say, is the foundation of a successful society, and therefore we should not scorn it, but celebrate it. Do you think we should be able to fornicate with dogs? Do you really expect people to accept this? You are disgusting. Sex with a canine is a sin, not just according to Christian dogma, but according to the moral fiber of that City on a Hill called America.
Apparently, you don’t learn that in legal studies. Those marxist professors are bastards and you should tell them to move to Russia.
You write, “…the state Supreme Court serves only to interpret and enforce the respective laws of the state as well as the state and federal constitutions, regardless of what popular opinion thinks about it.”
This is the textbook definition, and if the justices followed it, these elections would not be a political affair. However, when the Supreme Court begins to accept cases and make decisions with the express intent of superseding the Legislative process and doing the bidding of certain groups (like WEAC-virtual schools and trial lawyers-lead paint lawsuit), they enter the political arena. In that arena, their philosophy is fair game and, frankly, should be analyzed and exposed.
@5:53
Nice ad hominem. Try attacking the issue next time
5:53,
Do you have a JD? Do you even know what that is?
No one’s talking about marrying dogs. Where the hell did that come from?
You know what drives me nuts about people like you is that you just don’t get that our judges and justices read into the constitution the very values this country is based upon. Judges see a statute that discriminates against a particular sect of society, reference the Declaration’s guarantee of equal rights and you throw a hissy fit because you can’t hate on gays or blacks or jews anymore.
Your response is even more asinine than usual. Using over the top examples like people having sex with dogs… it’s so stupid it hardly warrants a response because you KNOW that there’s an appreciable difference between allowing a significant and protected portion of society to marry each other and allowing some sick fuck to have sex with a dog. And if you don’t, well tough shit - that’s our republic’s values; not your bullshit Christian extremism.
And PS Russia isn’t marxist, and hasn’t been since the early 1990s, anymore. If anything it’s fascist, but since you haven’t earned anything resembling an education I’m sure the distinction will be completely lost on you, you ignorant piece of shit.
The problem with author’s suggestion, to select justices by so called “merit choice,” is that merit must be determined by someone. That someone, or someones will be a politically appointed person or body. Some states, and the feds do appoint justices. Is the US SCT less politcally affected than the Wis SCT?
Yes, recent SC elections in this state have been brutal. Frankly, I was sickened and offended. But, taking the selection of justices out of the hands of the electorate and into the hands of politcal appointees does not in any way guarantee (or even probably result in) a more qualified, or less partisan bench. It’s just not that simple.
JD 2001
5:53
You’re dumb.
@5:53-
Youre an idiot. No need to get into your rediculous response directly but just one thing; how is Socrates related to our “founding principles?” We did not start a Socratic state, moron.
12:03 you’re probably correct that it doesn’t guarantee that the results will be better. But the appointment of other federal judges in lower circuits and district courts and the relative lack of hoopla over it suggests that Mr Slocum’s idea might be correct.
I see no problem with people being allowed to elect someone who agrees with their interpretation of the law.