"Until about a decade ago, though, elections for state supreme courts were usually only the province of wonky election nerds and those in the legal profession."

"But things changed in the early 2010s. 'There was a recognition, especially on the right, that these courts were major players in high-profile policy fights,' said Douglas Keith, an expert on state courts at the Brennan Center. Republicans had tremendous success in gubernatorial and state-legislative elections, but the laws they passed still encountered obstacles in state courts. As a result, outside groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee started spending serious money on judicial elections.... As the 2020 redistricting cycle loomed, conservative and, increasingly, liberal groups zeroed in on state supreme courts as a key battleground.... The U.S. Supreme Court has also raised the stakes of state supreme court elections by delegating major legal questions to the states over the past few years. For instance, the 2019 case Rucho v. Common Cause declared that only state, not federal, courts could decide partisan gerrymandering questions. And now that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has ended the national right to abortion, the power to re-legalize abortion in states that have banned it ultimately rests with state supreme courts. Indeed, abortion and redistricting are both at stake in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election...."

From "How Did State Supreme Court Races Get So Expensive?/Wisconsin's is only the latest example" (FiveThirtyEight).

The Supreme Court is not "delegating major legal questions to the states." The delegating is done by the Constitution, and "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Court is merely — officially — only figuring out what questions are determined by federal law and declining to exercise power it doesn't have. That's either judicial restraint or judicial activism, depending on some mysterious blend of your political predilections, credulity, and hopes and dreams.

"In the 1980s and 1990s, the politics of crime turned distinctly punitive and remained racially coded."

"Hillary Clinton’s reference to 'superpredators' when talking about crime (which has come up repeatedly in the current campaign) was made in 1996. On the campaign trail and in office, Bill Clinton worked to shore up his 'tough on crime' credentials. As the legal historian Ian Haney Lopez writes, 'Clinton flew back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of a mentally impaired black individual, Ricky Ray Rector,' and he advocated for a number of federal measures, including [the] federal 'three strikes' law."

From "From Wallace To Trump, The Evolution of 'Law And Order,'" by Marquette polisci prof Julia Azari at FiveThirtyEight.

That reminds me: At Sunday's Democratic candidates town hall, Hillary Clinton got a question from a black man named Ricky Jackson, who'd spent 39 years in prison, some of it on death row (and won freedom through the work of the Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati).

Ricky Jackson did not bring up the horrible Ricky Ray Rector case and the racial politics of 1996. I don't know who screened or wrote his question for him, but it was a tame invitation to justify the death penalty in light of the cases of innocence we've seen. The only racial element to Jackson's question was the visual, Jackson himself. And Hillary had a nice opportunity to express empathy for him and balance that with a demand for excellent judicial process and some targeted outrage over real crime (without using the word "superpredators").

What she did was take a hard shot at state courts: "[T'he states have proven themselves incapable of carrying out fair trials that give any defendant all of the rights a defendant should have, all of the support that the defendant's lawyer should have."

State courts are incapable of giving any defendant a fair trial? Not only are all state court trials unfair, it's impossible for state courts to give a fair trial! That's a ridiculous statement. Presumably, she'll walk it back if confronted, but clearly, she had no compunction about stirring up anxiety that the courts that hear the vast majority of criminal trials are hopelessly unfair. That doesn't relate only to the death penalty, but to everyone who's convicted, now and in the future, in state courts.

But federal courts — federal courts are different. She doesn't discourse on the reason. (I'm familiar with it. It's a topic I teach. But it doesn't go so far as to portray the state courts as always and forever unfair.) She supports the death penalty — though she's still "struggling" with it — for "terrorist activities" — but maybe that's a "distinction that is hard to support." Note the weak hedging, even after the intemperate trashing of state courts.

Here's a Salon article from last July, "Bill Clinton’s gutsy apologies: Now he owes one to Ricky Ray Rector," quoting Margaret Kimberley at The Black Commentator:

[R]icky Ray Rector became world famous upon his execution in 1992. Then Governor Bill Clinton left the campaign trail in January of that year to sign the warrant for Rector’s execution. Rector’s mental capacity was such that when taken from his cell as a “dead man walking” he told a guard to save his pie. He thought he would return to finish his dessert.

I try to remember this story when I am told that all Black people love Bill Clinton or that he should be considered the first Black president. Clinton wasn’t Black when Rector needed him. He was just another politician who didn’t want to be labeled soft on crime.

AND: By the way, what's the historical origin — in American politics — of the stock argument that a candidate is "soft on crime"? Was it George Wallace in 1968?

"Monona parents whose children repeatedly bully others can now be ticketed by police and fined in municipal court."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

Monona Police Chief Wally Ostrenga... thinks the parent-liability clause will be used sparingly, if at all, and only in cases where parents are obstructive or uncooperative. He hopes the mere threat of a ticket will be enough....

The broader ordinance prohibits any person age 12 or older from engaging in bullying, subject to similar municipal fines. The ordinance defines bullying as “an intentional course of conduct which is reasonably likely to intimidate, emotionally abuse, slander, threaten or intimidate another person and which serves no legitimate purpose.”

Ironic that bullying is defined to include threats and the police plan to use the ordinance to make threats. But the ordinance refers to threats that serve no legitimate purpose. But is there a legitimate purpose to threatening to make parents pay $114 if they don't take action to control the teenagers who express themselves in a manner that the authorities have decided is too hurtful?

“Sometimes you’ll knock on someone’s door and they won’t want to talk to you — their kids are perfect, they could never do anything wrong,” Ostrenga said. “This is for those times when we get the door slammed in our faces.”

So the purpose is, admittedly, to pressure parents to talk to the police. The people who have been declining to speak with the police will now have to pay for the privilege.

Parents who are making a good-faith effort to address a child’s behavior would not be ticketed, he said.

City Attorney William S. Cole called the tactic “a tool of last resort” and said he believes it would withstand a court challenge.

I guess there is such "a court" here in Dane County — where Monona, like Madison, is located — and I would feel much more intimidated, emotionally abused, and threatened if I didn't believe — speaking of beliefs — that court would be reversed on appeal.