Dennis Aftergut and Austin Sarat write:

MAGA Republicans in Wisconsin are gearing up to impeach newly elected state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, just five weeks after she took her seat on the court and before she has cast her first vote. They want to stop her from doing what the majority of Wisconsin voters elected her to do.

Their plan is nothing less than a coup attempt, an effort to sideline a duly elected judge not because she has committed an impeachable offense but because of what she might do — namely, join her liberal colleagues in throwing out gerrymandered state legislative maps and legalizing abortion in Wisconsin.

Impeachments of federal or state judges are rare. The National Conference of State Legislatures offers the following examples:

In 1994, a state Supreme Court justice became the first Pennsylvania judge to be impeached in 183 years. In 2000, the New Hampshire House held an impeachment proceeding — something that the House had not done in 210 years…. The Illinois House has impeached only two people in the state’s history — a judge in 1832-33 and a governor in 2008-9.

Even with these limited precedents, our country has never seen anything quite like what is unfolding in Wisconsin.

On Wednesday, the state Democratic Party unveiled a $4 million initiative aimed at mobilizing voters to press Republicans in the state legislature to back down from their planned coup. [Continue reading…]