After years of bizarre, activist rulings from the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Wisconsin voters had had enough, and turned an extreme liberal justice out of office. (Via Instapundit.)
Naturally, it didn’t sit well with some liberals that voters might actually use their power:
In the wake of Justice Butler’s defeat, some liberals have declared that elections for the state’s supreme court should end, and its members be appointed by the governor. Tom Basting, president of the Wisconsin Bar, claims that “judges are different from other elected officials” and “that means some of the standards voters typically use when evaluating candidates don’t apply to judges.”
On the contrary, the Wisconsin Supreme Court had set itself up as an openly political body, a second legislature of sorts:
In Ferdon v. Wisconsin Patients, [it] declared unconstitutional the state’s cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases. It argued that the caps bore “no rational relationship to a legitimate government interest.” That conclusion was bizarre, since the legislature had specifically passed the caps to make malpractice insurance “available and affordable,” and the caps worked. In 2004, the American Medical Association judged Wisconsin to be one of only six states not in a medical malpractice crisis. Marquette University law professor Rick Esenberg concluded that under the court’s reasoning in that case, “almost any law is subject to being struck down.”
If the liberals are going to make courts into policy-making bodies, they shouldn’t be surprised when the voters want a say.
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