Supreme Court Candidates Disagree On Relevancy Of Ethics Charge

This story is Part One in a two-part series by Gilman Halsted about the upcoming state Supreme Court election. Part Two will broadcast and be made available online tomorrow.

Voters will go to the polls on Tuesday to either re-elect Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack to another 10-year term, or replace her with Marquette University law professor Ed Fallone. A topic that has been at the fore in the race is where the two candidates stand on resolving the outstanding ethics charges pending against Justice David Prosser.

Justice Roggensack has done her best throughout the campaign to encourage voters not to focus on the 2011 physical altercation between Justice Prosser and Justice Anne Walsh Bradley. Instead, she has stressed her almost 17 years of experience as both an appeals court judge and Supreme Court justice as the reason voters should re-elect her.

“Because of that experience, I am able to give the public a much more thorough review of the legal decisions that I review as a Supreme Court justice, because I have done the work of a judge myself. That experience is also a broad experience in that I have reviewed cases from all substantive areas of law.”

In defending his own qualifications to serve on the court, Ed Fallone points to his 25 years as a practicing attorney, two decades as a law professor and his community work helping people represent themselves in court:

“Middle-class families that are trying to find affordable lawyers, trying to navigate the justice system in our state, oftentimes on their own. So what I have is a breadth of knowledge, a depth of knowledge – expertise that is otherwise not currently represented on our seven-member court.”

And Fallone says he can use that different experience to help resolve the Prosser ethics case. He says it is the central issue of the campaign because it has caused the public to lose faith in the court’s ability to make fair and impartial decisions. If elected, he says he will make it a priority to defuse the divisions on the court that he says led to the incident.

“Without any prior involvement in these grudges, without being a part of any faction – not a part of any 4-3 split – that I could be the one new voice to build consensus on the court – the one independent person. If previously there were a 4-3 split, hopefully, I believe with my election there will be 3-3-1 on the court.”

Roggensack says there are no factions on the court and promises she and her colleagues will resolve the discipline case after the election.

“I’m open to any suggestion that’s brought up, but the curt 7-0 needs to put its arms around this problem, and the court needs to fix the damage that’s been done to the institution.”

But Fallone says Roggensack is blocking the court’s ability to rule on the ethics charges by refusing to weigh in. He says if elected, he will push the court to at least let the facts of the incident be heard by a neutral panel of three appellate judges

“I want to be the outsider who can build consensus on this issue and on other issues. And that’s going to take some consultation with my new colleagues. That’s going to take hearing their views and trying to work a way to go forward.”

Fallone and Roggensack have different visions about how to prevent future deadlocks over judicial discipline on the high court. Fallone is convinced the current system in which justices police themselves with the help of a panel of appellate judges. Roggensack says that system won’t work in cases like the one involving Prosser where members of the court were witnesses. She says only the legislature can change that system.

Fallone and Roggensack have clashed on other issues during the campaign including the influence of money in judicial campaigns, and the rules for requiring judges to step down from a case if they are perceived as biased. That will be the focus of tomorrow’s report on the Supreme Court election.