Last week, Senate Guru dilligently traced the partisan makeup of the Minnesota Supreme Court -- which will be hearing Coleman's next appeal -- over at his site and then over the weekend Down With Tyranny noted that one of the court's justices, Christopher Dietzen, has actually donated money to Norm Coleman and suggested that perhaps Dietzen should recuse himself from any Coleman appeal. Following up on DWT, Senate Guru wrote here at MyDD last night:

Remember that two of the Minnesota Supreme Court's seven Justices recused themselves from hearing Coleman's appeal to the state Supreme Court because they served on the state Canvassing Board.  Those two Justices wanted to avoid the conflict of having served on the Canvassing Board and then serving on the Court that will hear an appeal of, in part, the Canvassing Board's actions and decisions.

Well, one of the remaining Justices that will decide Norm Coleman's electoral fate is a two-time Norm Coleman donor!  Heck, one of the two contributions occurred in the six years leading up to Coleman's 2008 re-election bid - in other words, it was put toward this very election whose result Coleman is preparing to appeal.  This is a crystal clear conflict of interest.

Indeed. Today, TPM picks it up and wonders "Who Will Be Left On Minnesota Supreme Court To Hear Appeal?" On whether Dietzen should recuse himself:

Regarding Dietzen, Hamline University Prof. David Schultz tells us that the case for recusal points towards yes.

Schultz agreed with me that there's no immediate evidence that Dietzen has actually behaved in any biased manner in this case. "But here's where the issue changes a little bit," Schultz explained. "If it's now starting to run on the blogs at this point, that perhaps he's got a conflict because of the contributions, the Minnesota codes of judicial conflict address not just actual conflict but the perceptions of conflict."

"That's not saying he shouldn't have recused himself before," said Schultz, "but that suggests to me he may have more of an appearance of conflict or bias than he would have before." [...]

Schultz further noted that the decision to recuse is made by the individual judges themselves, and they're usually very good at self-policing. As for himself, Schultz said what he would do if he were under the circumstances Dietzen is in: "If I were sitting on the bench in that matter, I would recuse myself, because at this point there is a paper-trail record of political contributions to a party in the case."

Great work by Senate Guru and Down With Tyranny for getting this out there. It's spread like wildfire since last night, which could, in and of itself, lead to the recusal of a justice who clearly would hold at least some bias toward Coleman during the appeal.

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