Robert Yablon:
There are several types of reforms that we might think about, and the current Chief Justice Jill Karofsky, she has indicated openness to revisiting these rules. So, the current rules that we have are in part the product of the conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2010. One of the things they did was actually say in the rules that the mere fact that you have received financial support in the form of a contribution or other financial support to your campaign is not a reason to recuse. And so one change — and this has actually been proposed recently by a group of retired judges — would be to get rid of that presumption against recusal and instead require the justices who have received campaign funds to do a more in-depth analysis about whether those contributions require their recusal. There are some states that create an even brighter line rule where above a certain threshold of contribution or financial support, a justice would have to step aside. The benefit there of that kind of thing is it does create a brighter line. What are other reforms? You know, the majority of states do handle things the way Wisconsin does in terms of leaving it in the hands of the individual justice to decide whether they should recuse. But there are some states that actually assign the decision-making on recusal to someone else. And so it's possible that that could be worth considering. There are questions more generally about whether we ought to change the way that judicial elections are financed in Wisconsin. We did, in the past, have a system of public financing. Is that something that could be restored? And would that at least remove some of the questions about whether the financial backing that justices are receiving are affecting their decision-making? One challenge with that is that judicial elections have gotten so expensive that it would require a lot of public money to make it worthwhile for justices to opt in to that kind of system. So, you know, it wouldn't surprise me at all if in the coming months we get more discussion of these possible recusal reforms, and I think there's even more that folks might think about.