State judges association opposes election by district

The Journal Sentinel staff

The state association of circuit judges is coming out against electing judges by districts an idea intended to increase the number of minorities on the bench and that has angered two Milwaukee County judges.

Outagamie County Judge Harold V. Froehlich, president of the Wisconsin Trial Judges Association, announced Monday that the group was intervening in a federal lawsuit filed by the NAACP to overturn the current system, in which judges must run countywide for election.

In the suit, filed last November, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People argues that forcing judges to run countywide violates the U.S. Voting Rights Act because white voters tend to vote as a racial bloc against black candidates.

But in a letter made public Monday, Froehlich said that circuit judges have been elected countywide for the last 147 years and that district election of judges was not "wise public policy."

"In district elections, Milwaukee County residents could only participate in the election for the specific judge in his or her district," Froehlich wrote. "The result would be that most of the time citizens would have their cases heard by judges for whom they would never have the opportunity to vote for or against."

Froehlich added that the association believed that "the establishment of small segregated districts for judicial elections will deprive all citizens of the opportunity to critically review the qualifications and performance of all judges in the county. District elections would represent bad public policy for all the voters of Milwaukee County and many other parts of the state with substantial minority populations."

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Stanley A. Miller, one of two black judges in the county advocating changes to increase the number of blacks on the bench, said the intervention by the judges' association against district elections was "surprising and disturbing" given that intervention had not been fully debated by the judges.

In both a letter to Froehlich and in an interview Monday, Miller said the membership of the judges' association had not been given notice of the meeting where the decision to intervene had been made.

Both Miller and Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Russell Stamper said they objected to the intervention in the lawsuit and requested a prompt meeting of the entire judges' association to consider rescinding the intervention.

The two judges also said they objected to Foley & Lardner, the state's biggest law firm, representing the judges association for free in the intervention, claiming that the judicial code of ethics barred gifts to judges.

"We've got a canon of ethics that says we can't accept anything of value and these are free legal services by the state's biggest law firm," Miller said Monday in an interview in his courthouse chambers.

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