Wisconsin Supreme Court Observers Feel Court May Be Too Fractured

Monday, September 11th, 2023 -- 8:08 AM

(Jessie Opoien, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) It was April 2017 when the Wisconsin Supreme Court, after a heated debate, rejected an effort to establish a rule requiring justices to step aside from cases involving their biggest financial backers, said Jessie Opoien with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"I think," then-Justice Shirley Abrahamson joked as the court wrapped up its debate with a 5-2 vote, "we maybe need a therapy session, but that's not for me to say."

Six years later, the conservative justices who outnumbered Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley on the recusal vote have lost what was once an iron grip on the court’s ideological majority and Republican lawmakers are threatening the court’s newest liberal justice with impeachment if she doesn’t recuse from a case that could benefit her biggest campaign contributor.

This time, one former justice worries, a therapy session might not be enough to repair the fractures within the court that have only deepened since Justice Janet Protasiewicz was sworn in last month.

“So many harsh, terrible things have been said. It's going to be very hard, I think, for them to sit at a table and to be able to find common ground and to be able to compromise on whatever they need to compromise on,” former Justice Janine Geske said.

“There are a lot of layers to this, somebody's going to have to work through, and I think it's going to be hard for them to be able to do it. … I don't know that it can be done.” Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, recently likened the dynamic of the court to a “food fight.”

Marquette University Law School professor Chad Oldfather calls it “a mess.” “My guess is that (the conflict) just furthers the sense that has been growing for a while … that they're just political actors, that there's no difference between what they do and what members of the Legislature do. And that's a problem because they're not supposed to do the same job,” Oldfather said.

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