A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court has adopted a rule that allows members of the court to participate in cases where one of the parties involved may have been a large contributor to a justice’s political campaign.

It’s another example where someone might look suspiciously at how justice is rendered in Wisconsin.

A more reasonable rule would attach some limit to campaign contributions beyond which a member of the court would have to consider his or her neutrality in a case. In fact, such a limit was proposed by former Supreme Court Justice William Bablitch and the League of Women Voters, but the court didn’t adopt it.

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Instead the court adopted, on a 4-3 vote, a rule drafted by two major contributors to Supreme Court election campaigns, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. The rule says, “Endorsements, campaign contributions and independently run ads are not enough, in themselves, to force a judge off a case.”

In 2007, Justice Annette Ziegler recused herself from a case because trade associations representing parties to the case had made substantial contributions to her campaign. The remaining six justices were divided on the case, so no decision was rendered, and the case went back to a lower court, a court that had originally sent the case to the Supreme Court because of the issue’s importance.

That’s an example where campaign contributions made one justice seem less than neutral, so she recused herself, and then the court couldn’t do its job. That’s a serious problem, but the solution isn’t to declare that judges are going to be impartial no matter what happens in the political campaign that puts them on the job.

The court, and the residents of Wisconsin, would be better served if the court set a limit to prevent large contributors from appearing to buy favorable decisions through the election campaign.