Appoint Justices to Wisconsin's Supreme Court?

The Leftists cannot get over the election of Mike Gableman to the Supreme Court. They simply cannot handle the truth: The people of Wisconsin tossed out Louis Butler.

What to do?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial Board is making a bold suggestion.

Justice Shirley Abrahamson is up for re-election to the state Supreme Court next year. And our guess is that if you felt like taking a shower after this year's race for the court seat won by Michael Gableman, you might want to invest in an industrial-sized bathtub for next year's election.

After two campaigns in two years marked by sleazy ads, empty rhetoric and issues often hardly related to the actual work of the court, expect more of the same in 2009. And it won't matter very much who Abrahamson's opponent is or that both candidates may be people of integrity without a vicious bone in their bodies. Ads from third parties have become such a large part of the campaign process that the candidates themselves have lost control of the race.

Which is why it's time to reconsider the manner in which we select justices for the state Supreme Court and follow the model of the federal government and most other states that have some kind of appointment process.

State Rep. Frederick P. Kessler (D-Milwaukee) is talking about introducing a constitutional amendment that would allow the governor to appoint a candidate that the state Senate would have to confirm. After serving one term, the justice would be subject to a vote in the Senate; if 21 of the 33 senators voted to unseat the justice, the governor would have to make another appointment.

Kessler has offered an idea worth serious discussion. Other systems worth considering are judicial commissions that make recommendations to a governor and popular referendums on the justice - voters would vote "yes" or "no" - after a certain time on the bench and at periodic intervals.

What's certain is that a change is needed. Some will say Kessler's suggestion - and our support of it - is sour grapes because the candidate we recommended, Justice Louis Butler, lost to Gableman. Not so. Kessler made his suggestion more than a week before the election, when it appeared Butler might win. And our support for a change would remain had Butler won.

Yeah, right.

This has everything to do with Butler's defeat.

If Butler had won, the Journal Sentinel would not be calling for a change. I don't buy it.