ADF Alliance Alert

The AP reports:

A little-known county judge has narrowly defeated a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice with a law-and-order message and a barrage of third-party ads in a race that will go down as one of the state’s nastiest.

Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman captured about 51 percent of Tuesday’s vote to edge Justice Louis Butler for a 10-year term, the first time an incumbent justice has been defeated in 41 years.

Gableman, 41, will take office in August, but the effects of the race will linger.

The Judicial Commission is reviewing complaints against both men, and calls for reforming how Supreme Court justices are chosen will only grow given the mudslinging and big money spent this year.

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, who appointed Butler in 2004, making him the state’s first black justice, bemoaned the race’s outcome Wednesday.

The Wall Street Journal has this report, The Wisconsin Tragedy:

Governor Jim Doyle called the result of Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election “a tragedy.” It’s surprising to hear how little he thinks of his constituents, who had the sense to depose one of the court’s ultra-liberal justices and in the process helped toughen the standards for judicial accountability.

The election was a referendum on Louis Butler and the high court’s sharp political turn. Justice Butler was appointed by Governor Doyle, a Democrat, to fill a vacancy in 2004. This gave liberals a majority and Justice Butler proceeded to indulge the legal theories of the tort bar and activist left, for instance laying waste to Wisconsin’s medical malpractice laws and endorsing a “risk contribution” liability standard for lead paint that made the question of guilt or innocence irrelevant.

The How Appealing Blog links to several other reports on the election.

See this First Freedoms Foundation white paper by Michael Dean: What’s at stake in 2008: Battle for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Michael writes:

On one hand, a bare-knuckles race is especially regrettable because it sends the message that courts are political prizes rather than dispassionate, deliberative institutions responsible for objective justice. And on a personal level, Gableman and Butler are both bright lawyers and competent judges with strong records of ublic service. Yet their characters are being smeared, their records challenged, and their views distorted – often by interest groups who don’t even know them, much less have any particular commitment to the Wisconsin Supreme Court as an institution.

But on the other hand, an intense, high profile contest should be welcomed. For better or worse, the courts ave, in fact, become political prizes – the most profound force for social change in our constitutional system, and an historic force in economic regulation as well.
The 2008 election will have profound consequences for the future of the court and Wisconsin, and a vigorous campaign will inform the public about the power of the courts, the critical function of statutory and constitutional interpretation, and the dramatic differences in the two candidates’ judicial philosophies.