From our sister publication in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Law Journal:
On his first day as a former justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Justice Louis B. Butler, Jr., addressed the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which was holding its 50th annual convention in Milwaukee on Aug. 1.
Discussing the loss of his seat to Justice Michael Gableman in April, for the first time since the election, Butler laid the blame with Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce. He said the election sent a chilling message to judges: “Do not vote against business interests; and if you do, avoid having represented criminal defendants at any time in your career.”
Butler traced his defeat to three civil cases decided in 2005: the Miller Park case, which lowered the threshold for awarding punitive damages; the Ferdon case, which struck down the cap on medical malpractice damages for pain and suffering; and Thomas v. Mallett, which applied the risk contribution theory of liability to manufacturers of lead paint.
After those decisions, Butler stated, “A powerful special interest group, WMC, decided that I had to go. Because I sometimes ruled in favor of consumers, that was unacceptable.”He was targeted, he said, “simply because he did not support [business interests] 100 percent of the time.”
Noting that neither Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, nor Justice N. Patrick Crooks, were opposed, even though they had been in the majority in those cases, Butler posited that it was because neither had a criminal defense background.
Butler said, “WMC has no interest in criminal cases. But I could not be attacked because of the liability rulings. But I could be attacked, because I had the audacity to represent criminal defendants at one point in my career. I could easily be attacked for doing what I was supposed to do. WMC therefore recruited and found a candidate who had a prosecutorial background to contrast with his, and ran ads unfairly attacking him for representing a defendant on an appeal, falsely suggesting that it resulted in a child being raped.”
By using his earlier work defending criminal defendants as a means of affecting outcomes in civil cases, Butler claimed, “A seat on the court was bought. … They will continue to go around the country, purchasing judgeships one at a time.”
Showing posts with label Wisconsin; judicial elections. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wisconsin; judicial elections. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
It happened in Wisconsin; will it happen here?
The hard-fought battle for a seat on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ended this week with a win by a little known county judge.
On Tuesday, Michael Gableman defeated incumbent justice Louis Butler, the state’s first black high court jurist, in an election that is being touted by many as a tragedy and a sign of how far special interest groups will go to gain control of the court.
It was a close race, with Gableman squeaking by with 51 percent of the vote, but it was still a victory -- the second in two years for conservatives who have criticized the Wisconsin court as antibusiness and activist. Gableman’s win will likely shift the leaning of the court from liberal to conservative.
The race has been widely publicized because of its negativity and cost.
“The combination of the money, the tenor, the disrespect for facts and the racially charged nature of the campaign makes it one of the true low points around the country for judicial elections,” said James Sample, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.
“It's certainly going to join the ranks of the worst examples nationally of negative court races,” agreed Jesse Rutledge, deputy director of Justice at Stake, a national group dedicated to keeping courts fair and impartial.
It is exactly this kind of judicial race that many members of Minnesota’s legal community are taking steps to avoid. The changes to our judicial canons have a lot of people worried that special interests and big money will begin seeping into our elections like they did in Wisconsin and many other states around the country. To that end, a bill was introduced in the Legislature this session that would alter our current method of selecting judges, although it appears unlikely to go very far in this session.
I don’t know the solution -- the Legislature and the voters will have to figure it out -- but I certainly don’t want to see what just took place in our border state happen here.
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