Earlier this year, after Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser’s razor-thin reelection victory led to a recount, Prosser hired an attorney named Jim Troupis to represent him in the recount proceedings. Now, less than three months after that recount ended, Troupis is set to argue a campaign finance case brought by various Tea Party groups before Prosser’s court, and Prosser’s former campaign director says that Justice Prosser will hear the case.
As it turns out, Prosser’s participation in this Tea Party case raises very serious ethical questions:
Of course, if Prosser does not recuse himself from the Tea Party case, it will hardly be the first time he undermined Wisconsin litigants’ ability to receive justice free from the taint of potential conflicts of interest. Prosser cast the key vote rejecting an ethics rule that would have prevented him and his colleagues from hearing cases involving their major campaign donors. Instead, he enacted an ethics rule written by corporate lobbyists. Those same lobbyists later showed their support for Prosser by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in “unlimited and undisclosed” funds to keep Prosser on the state supreme court.
More at link:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/08/16/297098/prosser-ethics-trouble/
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