At least they hear cases.

As Mr. Torvik has noted, the members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court do not seem to get along with each other very well. On the other hand, at least they show up to work. As WVNS-TV reports, all five justices on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals recently recused themselves on a case involving work done by one of the justices when she was lawyer. Or perhaps it is a case about how little work she did. In any event, and perhaps mindful of the spanking the United States Supreme Court gave them about recusals, the court is turning this over to a collection of West Virgina circuit court judges.

The thing that caught my attention about the case is that, according to her bio on the court's website, Justice Workman has been a judge since 1981 (and the first woman elected to statewide office in West Virgina at that) and on the West Virginia Supreme Court since 1988. Since she has been a judge for 30 years, how is it that she is also running Margaret Workman Law L.C., the respondent on the appeal? It turns out that Justice's Workman's bio omits the fact that she was not on the West Virginia Supreme Court from 2000-2008. When running to return to the court, she told the Wheeling Intelligencer and News-Register that she stepped down to stay at home with her children. That does not appear to have been entirely accurate because if it were the citizens of West Virginia would not be paying their supreme court justices to stay home.