Jessica McBride & Jim Piwowarczyk
“The majority’s outcome-focused decision-making in this case will delight many. A whole cottage industry of lawyers, academics, and public policy groups searching for some way to police partisan gerrymandering will celebrate. My colleagues will be saluted by the media, honored by the professoriate, and cheered by political activists. But after the merriment subsides, the sober reality will set in.
Without legislative resolution, Wisconsin Supreme Court races will be a perpetual contest between political forces in search of political power, who now know that four members of this court have assumed the authority to bestow it. A court that has long been accused of partisanship will now be enmeshed in it, with no end in sight. Rather than keep our role in redistricting narrow and circumspect, the majority seizes vast new powers for itself.”
WILL:
Redistricting: Although the issues surrounding decennial redistricting were resolved by the Wisconsin Supreme Court just a year and a half ago, Petitioners sought to re-litigate that case. They asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to declare the current maps unconstitutional, draw new maps from scratch. The court has now agreed to do just that.
“If this thought sits a bit uneasily, blame the lawfaring leftists who engineered the sandbagging of the nation’s top jurists…. Embittered by electoral losses, unwilling to trust the will of voters, the left now routinely turns to extraordinary legal action in hopes of pressing the courts to impose its political objectives by judicial fiat. Every party to these high-stakes, highly speculative cases knew exactly where this would end. And not one cares a whit for the consequences for the high court…. The biggest question now is whether the three liberal justices understand the grave risks of this lawfaring agenda… Do they sign up for the campaign with opinions that justify novel legal theories and the judicial usurpation of elections — in the process inviting more special counsels, more rogue court decisions, more litigation? Or do they recognize this game for what it is, acknowledge the sound legal reasons for why no one has attempted such reckless prosecutions and lawsuits before, and send a message it needs to stop?”