How do judges of the Wisconsin Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1980 / Served to 1999

Donald W. Steinmetz

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

Donald W. Steinmetz was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1980. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2013
Tenure: 1980–1999 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Mount Mary University
Mount Mary University

Judicial Record

In our data, Steinmetz authored 243 published opinions for the court (1980–1999), plus 83 dissents and 51 concurrences. Most cited: Loy v. Bunderson (381 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 179 of these were attributed to Steinmetz by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1982	Loy v. Bunderson· Dissent†	320 N.W.2d 175	381
1985	State v. Dyess· Dissent†	370 N.W.2d 222	349
1983	Brockmeyer v. Dun & Bradstreet	335 N.W.2d 834	279
1990	State v. Johnson	449 N.W.2d 845	245
1996	UFE Inc. v. Labor & Industry Review Commission	548 N.W.2d 57	228
1995	Harnischfeger Corp. v. Labor & Industry Review Commission	539 N.W.2d 98	172
1990	State v. Richardson	456 N.W.2d 830	165
1998	State v. Phillips†	577 N.W.2d 794	161
1990	Just v. Land Reclamation Ltd.· Dissent†	456 N.W.2d 570	155
1998	Daanen & Janssen, Inc. v. Cedarapids, Inc.†	573 N.W.2d 842	153
1992	Elliott v. Donahue· Dissent†	485 N.W.2d 403	151
1988	Pamperin v. Trinity Memorial Hospital· Dissent†	423 N.W.2d 848	148
1995	Rockweit v. Senecal· Concurrence†	541 N.W.2d 742	143
1986	State v. Fry	388 N.W.2d 565	139
1982	Rimes v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Dissent†	316 N.W.2d 348	137

Showing the 15 most-cited of 377 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Wisconsin Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Donald W. Steinmetz on?: Donald W. Steinmetz was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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19 years on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).