Standing Room Only for IWF’s Judicial Campaign Reform Workshop
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| Attorney Virginia Bartelt, Attorney Brady Williamson Jr. and Professor Carin Clauss pass the microphone during the question and answer session. |
On October 28, 2009, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will hold a public hearing on conflicting petitions on how campaign contributions made for judicial elections should impact the judges elected. The League of Women Voters asks the Supreme Court to create rules that would require judges to recuse themselves from hearing cases in which a party or a lawyer involved in the case has contributed to their election campaign. Opposing this, the Wisconsin Realtors Association asks the State Supreme Court to amend the rules so that campaign contributions would not warrant recusal.
In a preview of this coming debate, Attorney Virginia Bartelt, representing the League of Women Voters, and Attorney Brady Williamson Jr., representing the Realtors Association, presented their respective views at a workshop held on September 16 in Milwaukee.
Over 50 people attended the workshop, primarily lawyers from the Milwaukee area. Bert Brandenburg, Executive Director of Justice at Stake (a non-profit organization in Washington DC dedicated to judicial election reform) and Attorney Adam Skaggs of the New York University Brennan Center of Law opened the presentation with an overview of the recent decision by the US Supreme Court which found that a supreme court justice from West Virginia should have recused himself from a business case in which one of the corporations involved had contributed $3 million to his campaign.
Following the presentations, participating lawyers –not surprisingly – debated the merits of the viewpoints which focus on the conflict between the First Amendment of the US Constitution (campaign contributions having been defined as an extension of free speech) and the Fourteenth Amendment which guarantees due process for all under the law.
IWF and the University of Wisconsin Law School organized the event.