The Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted rules Thursday to allow justices to hear cases from people or groups that have contributed to their campaigns.
The 4-3 ruling also will allow judicial campaigns to solicit donations from groups they may be presiding over in court.
The rules were written by the Wisconsin Realtors Association and the lobby group Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.
Jim Haney, president of WMC, said the main reason the rules were written were is so judges will not have to automatically disqualify themselves from cases simply because somebody has contributed to their campaign in the past.
Haney added the rules were written in response to a West Virginia incident where a judge was disqualified from a case involving a group that had contributed to his election campaign.
Haney said they did not want that case to lead to unnecessarily harsh restrictions in all types of campaign contributions in Wisconsin.
“If [judges] have to disqualify themselves, half the lawyers in the state wouldn’t be allowed to represent cases,” Haney said. “Our lawyers wanted the rule to say the mere fact you gave someone 10 bucks won’t preclude them from hearing a case.”
Haney added the rules were originally adopted in October but were finalized last week and do not effectively change the status quo. Judges presiding over cases where they have conflicts of interest are still usually encouraged to disqualify themselves.
Andrea Kaminski, executive director of the League of Women Voters, said she feels it was a bad idea for the Supreme Court to accept the proposal from the WRA and WMC because both groups pour huge amounts of money into judicial campaigns.
“It really reduces people’s confidence in the impartiality of the courts,” Kaminski said. “There’s the perception that people are paying the judges to get rulings.”
Kaminski added this decision might affect how lobbyist groups spend money in the future. There might be more direct contributions to judicial campaigns instead of lobbying to influence legislation.
According to University of Wisconsin associate professor of political science, Howard Schweber, the issue of ethics in judicial contributions has become more prominent during the last two judicial election cycles.
Schweber said Justices Michael Gableman and Annette Ziegler recently faced accusations of hearing cases where they had conflicts of interest, and the new rules were meant to insulate the justices against those charges.
“There was very serious talk of the embarrassment that would occur if newly elected state Supreme Court justices were sanctioned,” Schweber said. “It has a very specific political dimension. ”
Schweber added although judicial elections are supposed to be non-partisan, the new rules could make them resemble political races in the future.
“It will make future judicial elections even more nasty and partisan and even more driven by money,” Schweber said. “There’s no question that those influxes of money will be used to support candidates who are expected to vote in certain ways on certain issues.”
