On June 26, "the management team " of Epic Systems delivered a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal, declaring Epic 's intention to avoid doing business with local vendors or contractors who support the current agenda of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

Epic Systems ' decision was based on WMC 's actions during the recent judicial election between Michael Gablemen and Louis Butler.

Epic Systems ' outrage is well placed. During the election WMC spent $1.8 million -- more than any other group -- on a series of negative ads that portrayed Butler as soft on crime.

These ads were among the worst in an ugly election, falling somewhere between misleading and outright dishonest. Furthermore, these ads were an attempt to create fear and divert attention from other issues, a pattern of campaigning that has become depressingly familiar in our national politics over the past decade.

WMC 's actions, more than those of any other group, raise serious questions about the continuing viability of Wisconsin ' system of judicial elections in the face of unscrupulous and heavily financed campaigns.

There is a cautionary tale for WMC here, about the consequences of diving into this kind of bare-knuckled, slash-and-burn politics.

Epic Systems might not be the last Wisconsin business that looks for a way to express its revulsion at WMC 's actions. But there is a cautionary tale, too, in the actions of Epic Systems.

Epic Systems ' announcement indicates its intention to engage a version of a "secondary boycott, " a boycott on one party that is designed to create pressure on a third party.

Small businesses may be members of WMC for reasons having nothing to do with judicial elections, and their owners may well share Epic Systems ' opinion.

Nonetheless it is these small businesses who are being subjected to Epic Systems ' boycott.

Epic Systems is a big enough company that it is able to use its economic power to coerce vendors and contractors who depend on Epic Systems for their livelihood to withdraw from WMC and keep their political views to themselves.

Governments are not the only threats to free expression and the right of political association. There is a long and doleful history of businesses using their economic clout to silence views of employees, government officials and other business owners.

Epic System is right to disapprove of WMC, and the company can express its disapproval in any number of ways.

It can refuse to deal with WMC itself, take out full-page newspaper ads, or recruit like-minded businesses to form a rival organization. But it is wrong for Epic Systems to express its disapproval by pointing an economic gun at the heads of small business owners who may have been uninvolved in WMC 's decisions.

And as a precedent for future actions by other businesses -- perhaps with other political views -- it is a chilling reminder that core freedoms of association and expression may be threatened by the power of capital no less than by the power of the state.

Schweber is a professor of law and political science at UW-Madison.