More Reason to Appoint Justices

This one won’t be as awful as the last two, but it’s still pretty bad.

I refer to the latest contest for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Because the previous contests in 2024 and 2025 were battles for ideological control of the Court, they attracted national attention and truckloads of money from outside Wisconsin. Each of those races set a record for spending on a state judicial race.

And nearly all of that money went into negative ads suggesting that the other candidate wanted to release axe murderers and order that they be placed in the closets of your child’s school. I argued both times that this should finally drive Wisconsin to do what we should have done long ago: appoint, not elect, justices to our Supreme Court.

Because liberals have a lock on a majority now, this year’s race between liberal Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor and the conservative, Republican-backed Maria Lazar will fall back to more normal spending patterns. Still, fired up liberals have poured money into Taylor’s campaign while dispirited conservatives have been slow to chip in for Lazar.

With all that money, Taylor has already started buying TV ads. She doesn’t accuse her opponent of being soft on crime or suggest she’d be the hanging judge herself (the common tropes in these races), but she offers a new reason to appoint justices. In her ad you’d swear she’s running for her old legislative seat or for governor.

Here’s the transcript of that ad:

[Chris Taylor] Costs are on the rise. 

Extremists are trying to eliminate food assistance and BadgerCare. 

Even trying to bring back an 1849 abortion ban. 

Our courts are our last line of defense. 

That’s why I’m running for State Supreme Court. 

I’m Judge Chris Taylor. 

I’ve spent my career standing up for Wisconsin families, for abortion rights, and domestic violence survivors, and I’ll keep protecting Wisconsin on the State Supreme Court. 

[Narrator] Judge Chris Taylor. Protecting our rights, defending our freedoms.

The Supreme Court has nothing at all to do with the cost of living. I’m not aware that food assistance or Badger Care are issues that will find their way to the state Supreme Court and the abortion issue is now settled law. But if any of those issues do get before the Court, Taylor has now prejudged the cases. After all, only “extremists” would be on the other side. Forget about the idea that judges should not legislate from the bench; Taylor is laying out her policy agenda.

So, in its own way, this is an outrageous ad. And this will keep going on until we stop electing justices. To restore any sense of dignity and impartiality to the Court we need to move to an appointment system. I concede that that’s far from a perfect answer. Witness the United States Supreme Court of late. But it’s still better than this.