Court Spirals Down

The Wisconsin Supreme Court may be headed for its own constitutional crisis.

Chief Justice Annette Ziegler is refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of a new governing committee set up by the Court’s new liberal majority and she says she will advertise nationally for a new courts administrator, despite the fact that the liberals have already appointed one. So, what happens when the liberals meet on their own and take actions with regard to the administrator and other matters contrary to what Ziegler orders?

If you’ve been lamenting the loss of your favorite programs due to the writers’ strike, you might want to get your popcorn and tune into this reality show because it’s pretty entertaining — just try to forget that these people are supposed to be dignified jurists deciding weighty matters of law that impact millions of people.

If you haven’t been following this, here’s the quick summary of the plot so far. When a liberal majority took over at the beginning of August they moved quickly to assert themselves. They fired the state courts administrator because he had been hired by the conservatives. Then they replaced him with their own person, loyal to them. They also moved to undercut the Chief Justice by creating an administrative committee consisting of the Chief and two justices selected by the majority — which is to say the liberals.

Ziegler now has fired off an angry missive to the Court letting them know in no uncertain terms that she won’t schedule any meetings with the governance committee that she claims to be illegal and she will move forward with replacing the administrator on her own.

“You are making a mess of the judiciary, the court and the institution for years to come,” Ziegler wrote to her fellow justices and Audrey Skwierawski (the new administrator). “This must stop. … I have no confidence in the recent hostile takeover and the chaotic effect it has had on the court, staff, and the overall stable functioning of the courts.”

That comes from two internal emails that the Wisconsin State Journal says it “obtained,” suggesting that someone in that loop (probably a liberal) leaked it. So, unseemly emails were given to the press in an unseemly manner. Great.

But it’s also worth noting that Ziegler is only the Chief because the conservative justices went ahead with a vote giving her a new three year term back in May. That was a month after liberal candidate Janet Protasiewicz had been elected to the Court. Since they knew that the liberals would take over when Protasiewicz formally joined the Court on August 1st, the classy thing to do would have been to delay the vote until Protasiewicz could take her seat. They would have elected Ann Walsh Bradley to be Chief and that would have avoided this whole ugly power struggle. The liberals have the majority and so it’s only fair that they should be able to elect the Court’s leader.

Ziegler’s fulminating would be just undignified if she were right. But she’s also being a hypocrite. She and her friends on the Court and in the Legislature have pulled every dirty trick in the book to hang onto power. Legislative Republicans — backed up by the Court conservatives — have shamelessly gerrymandered the state and they moved to undercut the new Democratic Governor and Attorney General after they were elected in 2018, but before they could take office.

It’s not like the liberals are without blame. They should have left the perfectly competent courts administrator in place and waited until Ziegler’s term was up to replace her. Neither thing would have prevented them from doing what they will surely do — restore abortion rights and strike down the gerrymandered maps. Instead, they started an ugly fight that serves to further diminish the Court’s credibility with the public.

I suppose the liberals may be doing all this in part to get back at conservatives, but more substantively because they want to get new maps in place in time for the 2024 legislative elections and they don’t want Ziegler and the conservatives to throw up delays. That would be a more legitimate reason, but is it worth the damage to the Court’s reputation? Given that even fairer maps are not likely to switch legislative majorities back to the Democrats, I’m not so sure.

But having said that, Ziegler and her conservative colleague Rebecca Bradley have just gone off the deep end with their hypocritical and acerbic rebukes of the liberals.

On second thought don’t waste your popcorn on this mess. Save it for the Brewers and their exciting pennant run.