Forget the tractor at the farm auction. Forget the bargain at the garage sale. Save your money and buy yourself some justice, courtesy of the corruption-ready rule approved last week by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

By a vote of 4-3, the court adopted a judicial conduct rule written by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and the Wisconsin Realtors Association. The rule says that judges don't have to step aside from a case (properly called recusal) even if their campaigns have received large donations from parties in the case. For justices on the state Supreme Court this rule means the most because they run big-money races, and the cases they decide can inflate or doom the prospects of many special interest groups.

That is undoubtedly why we find WMC and the Realtors writing the rule. WMC alone spent an estimated $4 million to help elect justices Annette Ziegler and Michael Gableman, two of the four people who voted in favor of the new rule. They were joined by Patience Roggensack and David Prosser.

(Voting against this rule were justices N. Patrick Crooks and Ann Walsh Bradley, and Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.)

Not only is the vote a slight against judicial propriety, but look at two of the people who voted for it. Ziegler was publicly reprimanded by the court last year for not recusing herself from cases involving a bank in which her husband held an interest. She also did not recuse herself from a Supreme Court case that the WMC was very interested in. It spent about $2 million on her election campaign, and she wrote the 4-3 decision favoring its position. Gableman is presently being considered for discipline because of an attack ad which he ran in his successful and expensive race to unseat former Justice Louis Butler.

Budding journalists learn a rule: One must avoid not only conflicts of interest but the appearance of a conflict of interest, because that can undercut credibility. Is there proof that Ziegler's vote in the WMC case was influenced by the money instead of the law as she believes it should be interpreted? No, and that's the point. This is an appearance of conflict of interest, and her refusal to step aside, or any similar act weighed against such staggering amounts of money, smudges the perceived independence of the court.

In April 2008, after the battle between Gableman and Butler, we suggested that Wisconsin should follow the federal system to select its judiciary. Allow the governor to appoint judges, let the state Senate confirm appointments, and after 10 years let those individuals decide whether to retain a justice. Again, we say that there is a mountain of evidence in favor of such change: 4 million pieces of evidence.

The courts have always been the institution to which people look as the balancing instrument of society. It is the venue where judges measure conduct against the ultimate standards of the state and federal constitutions. It is the venue where the downtrodden can hope for justice because facts rule instead of money.

The misconduct which this rule makes possible is beyond outrageous. It is beyond unjust. It is beyond words.