The New York Times
NYT op-ed by Jill Karofsky
Shortly after defeating incumbent Justice Daniel Kelly for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Jill Karofsky got an email from John Guida, opinion editor at The New York Times, who asked if she would be interested in writing an op-ed for the paper.
“You can write about whatever you want,” Karofsky recalls Guida saying in a subsequent conversation. “But the perspective we don’t have is your perspective, the candidate’s perspective.”
Karofsky says it was an interesting process with a lot of back-and-forth and detailed fact-checking. “They wanted citations to every factual assertion in that article,” she says, while continuing along on her morning 5-mile run. She’s practiced at such multi-tasking: “I’ve spent hours and hours running and talking.”
In her op-ed, Karofsky is critical of both the U.S. Supreme Court and state Supreme Court, which she will join Aug. 1, for their decisions following Gov. Tony Evers’ attempt to postpone the April 7 election due to concerns over COVID-19. “In a mad flurry of activity the day before the election — probably never seen before and hopefully never seen again — partisan court majorities in cases at the Wisconsin and U.S. Supreme Courts reinstated the election and removed the deadline extension for absentee ballots to be returned.”
Karofsky says she is comfortable expressing these views even as she prepares to join colleagues whom she has called out in the national press. “My viewpoint is that we’ve been very consistent in that message and I’m going to be consistent in that message as a member of the Supreme Court. That we have to get partisanship out of the judiciary.”
She says writing the piece was therapeutic. “Being able to write down what happened in words — it ended up being very refined journaling.”
