Liberals took over the Wisconsin Supreme Court yesterday and promptly stepped on their own story.
The first action of the new 4-3 liberal majority was to engage in a senseless partisan witch hunt. They fired the state’s courts administrator because they could and, apparently, because he’s a conservative. Never mind that his job has nothing to do with partisan politics and he had executed it so well that the state Bar Association recognized Randy Koschnick for his service. Koschnick’s job was to administer the statewide court computer system, hire court personnel and work on judicial education.
According to a story in this morning’s State Journal, he helped alleviate the state’s court reporter shortage and organized a summit on mental health in the court system. He received an award from the Wisconsin Bar Association in 2020 for helping smooth court operations during the pandemic.
When liberal Justice Jill Karofsky called him with the bad news moments after the liberal majority assumed power, Karofsky told him that the move had nothing to do with his job performance, but offered no other explanation. That leads one to conclude that the explanation was that Koschnick had run, unsuccessfully, as a conservative against the liberal Justice Shirley Abrahamson way back in 2009. Koschnick has kept a low profile and no evidence has surfaced that he let politics creep into his job.
So, why did they do it? That’s a head scratcher. Unless there’s something that has been unreported, this looks like a bone-headed move. It would be bad enough to sack a competent administrator over his unrelated political views at any time, but to do it on the liberals’ first day in power sets a bad tone right from the start.
While I’m not impressed by new Justice Janet Protasiewicz, I’m still glad she won last April and was able to take her seat yesterday. For one thing, her conservative opponent, Dan Kelly, was far worse than she was. And for another, I’m sort of liberal myself and I like the prospect of reproductive rights being restored and fair legislative maps being drawn.
But what’s most important for courts isn’t any particular ruling, but the legitimacy they earn by the way they conduct themselves. God knows, the conservatives haven’t done the Court proud during their time in control. Now the liberals seem intent on dragging down the Court’s reputation still further.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
Someone once said, there are values, about which we can disagree, and process values, about which we have a lot of trouble agreeing. Somehow we get madder at the refs than we do at our team for not playing better. Disagreements about process values seem to not let us deal rationally with issues anymore.
The Legislature, as a duly-elected, representative, deliberative rule-making body should, in theory, be able to cobble together a brilliant set of REGULATIONS governing tough subjects like abortion or gun ownership that would satisfy most people. But they don’t seem able to do so. Slavishly voting according to party lines results in a winner-take-all mentality in legislatures and not very smart solutions. The result is tyranny of the majority.
If you can’t win on the legislative floor, you take your case to the Supreme Court, which just ends up acting like a super-legislature, but worse, because in law one side is usually found to be right and the other wrong.
The solution to legislating from the bench cannot be more legislating from the bench. It’ll be interesting to see on what basis the Supreme Court overrules the 1854 law. Like firing staff because of their political leanings, the result may be a short-term improvement, but you’re leaving a lot of information on the table and dumbing down the process.
LikeLike
AH, so what did you expect from a bunch of Dane county, city of Madison and Milwaukee liberals. wait, just wait till their rulling go up to the U.S. supreme court.
LikeLike
I don’t think we can assume this was political. Randy Koschnick was replaced by a female conservative judge appointed by Scott Walker. You may remember from your years in public service, Dave, that personnel matters are confidential. I would not be surprised if there were other issues at play here, issues that were tolerated by Justice Roggensack and the conservative majority, but that the new liberal majority would not tolerate. Not necessarily Wisconsin politics, but workplace behavior?
LikeLike
As I tell our good buddy Dan Schafer of Recombobulation Area fame every time something like this comes up on the Republican side: No one is going to remember this in a week. It’s ephemeral, pay it no mind.
LikeLike
You’re probably right. But it still was a bone headed move.
LikeLike