While liberals were
celebrating the election
Tuesday of a Wisconsin
Supreme Court justice who
will tip the court to the
left, voters in the state’s
8th senatorial district were
sending Republican Dan Knodl
to Madison. That gives the
GOP a Senate supermajority
and with it, the power to
remove key officials through
impeachment — including
judges. In late March, Knodl
said he would “certainly
consider” impeaching Janet
Protasiewicz, the new state
Supreme Court justice,
though he was talking about
her role as a county judge.
Would Wisconsin Republicans
impeach a justice simply
because they don’t like the
court’s rulings? Well, there
is nothing hypothetical
about how the state’s GOP
legislature has used its
power against other branches
of government.
In 2018, after Wisconsin
voters elected a Democratic
governor and attorney
general, the legislature and
the lame duck Republican
governor, significantly cut
back the power of both
offices. And while it might
be politically risky to
remove a justice whom voters
overwhelmingly elected, it’s
not at all far-fetched to
imagine that if the new
liberal court majority
strikes down the state’s
gerrymandered legislative
districts, that legislature
would respond by trying to
remove one or more justices
from office. And there’s
nothing hypothetical about
other states — looking at
you, North Carolina — where
supermajority GOP
legislatures have cut deeply
into the power of the
executive branch once
Democrats won those posts.
In the coming weeks and
months, the Nashville battle
may well be just a footnote
as legislatures exercise
their powers over everything
from the makeup and reach of
the courts to the
traditional powers of a
governor, to the will of the
voters who vote for ballot
propositions. It’s another
reminder that the most
important elections of the
21st century happened in
2010 — when legislatures
from one end of the country
to the other turned red and
began to reshape the
politics of the nation.