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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1978 / Served to 1982

John Louis Coffey

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

John Louis Coffey was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1978. He earned a law degree from Marquette University in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1922–2012
Tenure: 1978–1982 · 4 yrs
Education: Marquette 1943 · Marquette

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Marquette University	B.A.	1943
Marquette University	J.D.	1948

Judicial Record

In our data, Coffey authored 26 published opinions for the court (1978–1982), plus 19 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Wangen v. Ford Motor Co. (282 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. 56 of these were attributed to Coffey 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
1980	Wangen v. Ford Motor Co.· Dissent†	294 N.W.2d 437	282
1980	State v. Rabe· Concurrence†	291 N.W.2d 809	170
1982	State v. Holmes· Concurrence†	315 N.W.2d 703	168
1981	Kollasch v. Adamany· Concurrence†	313 N.W.2d 47	167
1980	Nottelson v. Department of Industry, Labor & Human Relations· Dissent†	287 N.W.2d 763	157
1982	Rimes v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Dissent†	316 N.W.2d 348	137
1979	Newspapers, Inc. v. Breier· Dissent†	279 N.W.2d 179	125
1981	Eberhardy v. Circuit Court for Wood County· Concurrence†	307 N.W.2d 881	119
1981	Law Enforcement Standards Board v. Village of Lyndon Station†	305 N.W.2d 89	76
1980	Crowley v. Knapp· Dissent†	288 N.W.2d 815	75
1979	Kozlowski v. John E. Smith's Sons Co.†	275 N.W.2d 915	72
1980	Barrera v. State†	298 N.W.2d 820	71
1980	State v. Jenich· Dissent†	288 N.W.2d 114	68
1980	Wisconsin Natural Gas Co. v. Ford, Bacon & Davis Construction Corp.†	291 N.W.2d 825	62
1981	State v. Schulz· Dissent†	102 Wis. 2d 423	55

Showing the 15 most-cited of 56 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 John Louis Coffey on?: John Louis Coffey 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

4 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).