The three candidates vying for a 10-year term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court differ sharply on ethical standards for the state’s judges and justices.
The winning candidate will take the seat left open by the September 2015 death of Justice Patrick Crooks. In October 2015, Gov. Scott Walker appointed Rebecca Bradley, then an appellate judge, to fill out the remaining months of Crooks’ term through July.
The three candidates—Justice Bradley, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Joe Donald and District 4 Appeals Court Presiding Judge JoAnne Kloppenburg—presented their ideas at a Milwaukee Bar Association-sponsored forum last week moderated by Wisconsin Eye’s Steve Walters.
The full 10-year term is up for grabs this spring. On Tuesday, Feb. 16, the three candidates will appear on the primary ballot statewide. The top two vote-getters will face each other in the April 5 general election.
The candidates addressed concerns about ethics on the state’s top court, as three of the current state Supreme Court justices—Justice Michael Gableman, Justice David Prosser and Justice Annette Ziegler—have faced serious concerns about their integrity and the court has done little to change the way justices are disciplined.
Bradley, who Walker appointed to the Supreme Court in October, said she’d like to get more information before changing the way that ethics complaints about justices are handled.
“I would certainly want to hear from all of the stakeholders who wish to take a position and be heard on that issue,” Bradley said.
Donald said he’d be open to allowing a panel of appeals court judges to review complaints about Supreme Court justices.
“I think it’s important that we ensure that we do everything that we can to enforce the integrity of our court and the belief that the decisions of our court and our justices are fair and impartial,” Donald said.
Kloppenburg took aim at Bradley’s three votes in December to deny reviews of the judicial code of conduct and the rules of professional conduct for attorneys and the procedures for disciplining attorneys.
“We need more transparency, not less, in the administrative and operational proceedings before the court and an open process for reviewing the judicial code of conduct is a step in the right direction,” Kloppenburg said.
The review of those matters would include when judges and justices would be required to step away from cases involving campaign donors. The state Supreme Court adopted rules in 2010 that actually allow justices to hear cases of their big donors and to accept contributions from parties who have a case before them. The rules were proposed by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association, and the four members of the conservative majority adopted them verbatim.
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Wisconsin’s lax standard for judges is out of line with a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says that judges who rule on a donor’s case deny the other party in the case the right to a fair trial.
In December, Bradley joined Chief Justice Patience Roggensack along with Justices Gableman, Prosser and Ziegler in those three votes to deny review of the court's ethical standards. Those are her only votes on the record as a Supreme Court justice; she hasn’t joined on any decisions on cases in her three months on the bench.
Bradley defended her votes last week, saying that the petitions to review those rules didn’t follow the proper procedure and she’d be open to looking at the issue.
But those who joined her in stopping the reviews may have other reasons for not cracking down on ethical concerns.
Ziegler was reprimanded by the Judicial Commission for presiding over cases as a circuit court judge that involved parties in which she had a financial interest. Gableman escaped punishment for running a false, race-baiting campaign ad in 2008 when the Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 on his ethics case. And Prosser got away with putting his hands around Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s neck during an argument, which he admitted doing. Since the majority of justices witnessed Prosser’s attack, they decided they couldn’t judge him.
Walker Appointed Bradley Three Times
Bradley is the newest justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. She was appointed by Walker in October 2015 to temporarily fill the seat left open by the death of Justice Patrick Crooks in September 2015.
This is the third time that Walker has appointed Bradley to a judicial position. In December 2012, Walker appointed Bradley, then working as an attorney in private practice, to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court. Then she ran for election as the incumbent in 2013 and won. In May 2015, Walker appointed her to the state appeals court. She served in that position for five months before the governor appointed her to the state’s highest court in October.
Bradley sought the Supreme Court appointment; Donald and Kloppenburg refused to be considered.
Both Donald and Kloppenburg are on the same page as the leaders of the clean government groups Common Cause in Wisconsin, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and Wisconsin Voices, who sent a letter to Walker asking him not to appoint a declared candidate to Crooks’ former seat, saying it would heighten tension and partisanship during the campaign.
Although Bradley has just three years of experience on the bench, she’s been active in the legal profession. Bradley was president of the Milwaukee chapter of the Federalist Society, an ultra-conservative group for attorneys; a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association; and is on the board of the St. Thomas More Lawyers Society of Wisconsin, a Catholic attorneys’ group. In 2006, Bradley, then a corporate attorney for the software firm RedPrairie, wrote an op-ed supporting a conscience clause for pharmacists that would enable them to refuse to fill a prescription for birth control, arguing that the medication could cause an abortion, a fringe view held among the religious right.
Last week, One Wisconsin Now discovered that the right-wing front group Wisconsin Alliance for Reform bought nearly $415,000 of pro-Bradley TV ad time in advance of the Feb. 16 primary. Bradley has also received help from the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which gathered signatures to place her on the ballot, a highly unusual dose of partisanship in a campaign for a nonpartisan office.
Donald and Kloppenburg are emphasizing their more robust records as trial attorneys and judges. Donald was appointed to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in 1996 by then-Gov. Tommy Thompson and has been re-elected four times since then, never drawing an opponent. He helped to launch the county’s drug treatment court and has presided over more than 350 jury trials as a judge.
Kloppenburg was an assistant attorney general for 23 years before she was elected to the court of appeals in 2012. In 2011, she ran against Prosser in a hotly contested race that was decided during a recount. A few weeks later, Prosser attacked Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in her chambers during a dispute about the conservative faction on the Supreme Court politicizing the court with the timing of a decision on Walker’s union-busting Act. 10.
