State Courts

This report analyzes an often-overlooked set of state entities that hold substantial power: judicial conduct commissions. These entities, which exist in every state, are primarily designed to protect the public from judicial misconduct and have broad authority to investigate and sanction state judges. As state courts gain increasing attention, the public and scholars should likewise attend to the entities that oversee them.

This Explainer offers legal and practical context to the calls for Justice Janet Protasiewicz to recuse herself from hearing two lawsuits challenging the state's legislative maps. It begins by describing the relevant federal and Wisconsin-specific legal standards for recusal. It then gives examples from Wisconsin and around the country of other instances in which recusal has—and has not—been required. The purpose of this explainer is to describe existing recusal rules, precedents, and practices, not to endorse or criticize them or to express a view on what the law of recusal should be.

State legislatures regularly propose and enact laws that seek to shape the substantive outcomes of state courts. These measures, including court-packing efforts, jurisdiction-stripping laws, and more creative maneuvers to change judicial selection or authority, would amount to legal earthquakes at the federal level. At the state level, these efforts often receive virtually no attention. This Essay brings the potent category of outcome-shaping court reform measures into focus and evaluates it as a question of state constitutional law.