Democracy Wire

Wisconsin needs to begin to figure out a better way to elect state Supreme Court justices and judges at all levels and those discussions need to begin in earnest now.

The national hype for this contest for ideological control of the State Supreme Court was justified and not over the top. It was by any measure, monumentally significant.

Hagedorn says he will be impartial when he is sworn in as a justice later this Summer. But in the absence of stronger recusal rules for Wisconsin judges, will he really be impartial, objective, and beholden only to the law and not his supporters?

All three branches of Wisconsin government continue to be infected with the political equivalent of the emerald ash borer. The Supreme Court, the Legislature and the Governor’s office are under the influence of far too much special interest money and the corruption it breeds.