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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Wisconsin / Joined 2004 / Active

Joan F. Kessler

Judge, Court of Appeals of Wisconsin

Joan F. Kessler is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Wisconsin (13 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), serving since 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2004 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Court of Appeals of Wisconsin	–	–

Education

University of Kansas
Marquette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Kessler authored 160 published opinions for the court (2004–2019), plus 9 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Malzewski v. Rapkin (38 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. 181 of these were attributed to Kessler 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
2006	Malzewski v. Rapkin· Dissent†	2006 WI App 183	38
2007	State v. Sloan†	2007 WI App 146	32
2009	State v. Phillips· Concurrence†	2009 WI App 179	30
2013	Bonstores Realty One, LLC v. City of Wauwatosa†	351 Wis. 2d 439	29
2016	State v. Cameron†	370 Wis. 2d 661	28
2009	Allright Properties, Inc. v. City of Milwaukee†	2009 WI App 46	28
2015	Laughland v. Beckett†	365 Wis. 2d 148	26
2008	State v. Payette†	2008 WI App 106	25
2006	Pum v. Wisconsin Physicians Service Insurance†	727 N.W.2d 346	25
2006	State v. Odom†	2006 WI App 145	23
2012	State v. Prescott†	345 Wis. 2d 313	19
2004	City of Milwaukee v. NL Industries, Inc.†	2005 WI App 7	18
2013	Terry v. Journal Broadcast Corp.†	351 Wis. 2d 479	17
2013	State v. Austin†	349 Wis. 2d 744	17
2004	Rebernick v. Wausau General Insurance· Concurrence†	2005 WI App 15	16

Showing the 15 most-cited of 181 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 Court of Appeals of Wisconsin reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is Joan F. Kessler on?: Joan F. Kessler is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Wisconsin.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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