This post originally appeared at https://www.bootsandsabers.com/2023/03/28/everything-is-on-the-table-in-wisconsin-supreme-court-election/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=everything-is-on-the-table-in-wisconsin-supreme-court-election

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

Early voting for the spring election is in full swing and the future of Wisconsin sits on the razor’s edge. If Daniel Kelly is elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the court will retain its slight lean to the left with changeling Justice Brian Hagedorn siding with the court’s liberal bloc more often than not on 4-3 rulings. If Janet Protasiewicz is elected, then expect the court’s new majority liberal activist bloc to abandon any pretense of government restraint and run roughshod over citizens’ rights.

It is regrettable that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has had to serve as the last bastion of defense against government overreach, but that has increasingly been its role as government officials progressively don the mantle of a ruling class. In just the last few years, the court has often (not often enough) stood athwart the path of government tyranny. During the pandemic, Gov. Tony Evers went to extraordinary lengths to exert government control over our lives. Even after it was clear that the virus was not nearly as lethal as originally thought and was primarily a threat to the elderly and immunocompromised, Evers sought to extend his personal arbitrary rule over our lives by suspending regular order with perpetual emergency health orders.

Under the threat of using the violent power of government, Evers illegally extended his emergency dictatorial orders to force citizens to stay in their homes, close their businesses, restrain their freedom of movement, force everyone to wear masks, and close their schools. In a ruling that should have been unanimous, only four of the court’s seven justices ruled that Evers had violated the law and returned the state to constitutional rule and the rule of law. How much more damage would Evers’ have illegally wrought had the court not stepped in?

With all of the other overreaches, we scarcely remember that Governor Evers also tried to suspend Wisconsinites’ right to self-governance. Just three years ago, Evers ordered that Wisconsin indefinitely delay the April election, thus denying citizens the right to elect their leaders in a despotic abandonment of democracy. Again, the Wisconsin Supreme Court had to act to ensure that the election would be held and that democ racy would not be suspended by the orders of a single man.

Governor Evers’ attempts to enact dictatorial rule to the cheers of elected Democrats is the most dramatic recent example of the Supreme Court protecting citizens from government overreach, but there are dozens of other examples.