Unpacking Wisconsin's high-stakes impeachment threat

+ constitutional revolution underway; surging antisemitism on X US Edition - Today's top story: Wisconsin GOP's impeachment threat against state Supreme Court justice is unsupported by law and would undermine judicial independence [View in browser]( US Edition | 14 September 2023 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( I love it when I have so many good stories to choose from that I find it hard to select a standout from the past week of politics coverage. But one story is distinctive this week for how purely it represents our approach to politics coverage. That’s a story by Robert Yablon and Derek Clinger at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s State Democracy Research Initiative. Early Monday morning, when I make notes for stories I want to cover over the coming week, I had written “crazy mess in Wisconsin.” If you don’t live in Wisconsin – and even if you do – those words might have been the total understanding you had of a complicated political conflict that involves the state legislature, supreme court, gerrymandering, judicial ethics rules and the raw exercise of power. When I spoke with Yablon that day, he had the exact same idea I had for a story that would serve the public interest by injecting facts into what had become a political circus. He and co-author Clinger would describe the law and practice of judicial recusal and impeachment in Wisconsin and beyond, the two issues underlying the conflict. The story they produced, “Wisconsin GOP’s impeachment threat against state Supreme Court justice is unsupported by law and would [undermine judicial independence](,” embodies the public service journalism we do here at The Conversation. It gives our readers the background, not the foreground – and I hope their explanation of the fundamental concepts and practices at stake in the conflict moves it from the status of “crazy mess in Wisconsin” to “understandable mess in Wisconsin.” Naomi Schalit Senior Editor, Politics + Democracy Janet Protasiewicz is sworn in as a state Supreme Court justice at the Wisconsin Capitol on Aug. 1, 2023. Sara Stathas for The Washington Post via Getty Images [Wisconsin GOP’s impeachment threat against state Supreme Court justice is unsupported by law and would undermine judicial independence]( Robert Yablon, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Derek Clinger, University of Wisconsin-Madison Impeaching a recently elected Wisconsin Supreme Court justice for conduct neither criminal nor corrupt would negate the people’s votes – and strike a blow at judicial independence. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, written in 1787 on parchment paper. 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