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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1966 / Served to 1978

Leo B. Hanley

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

Leo B. Hanley was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1908–1994
Tenure: 1966–1978 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Marquette University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hanley authored 497 published opinions for the court (1966–1978), plus 7 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Ernst v. State (138 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. 57 of these were attributed to Hanley 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
1969	Ernst v. State	170 N.W.2d 713	138
1976	State Ex Rel. Lynch v. Conta	239 N.W.2d 318	86
1976	Snyder v. Waukesha County Zoning Board of Adjustment	247 N.W.2d 98	83
1973	Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. v. Fairbanks Morse, Inc.	206 N.W.2d 414	79
1969	National Amusement Co. v. Department of Revenue	163 N.W.2d 625	79
1977	Department of Revenue v. Milwaukee Refining Corp.	257 N.W.2d 855	73
1974	School District No. 1 v. Department of Industry, Labor & Human Relations	215 N.W.2d 373	70
1977	Hopper v. City of Madison	256 N.W.2d 139	67
1968	Zimmerman v. Wisconsin Electric Power Co.	38 Wis. 2d 626	67
1977	Turner v. State	250 N.W.2d 706	66
1970	Luber v. Milwaukee County	177 N.W.2d 380	62
1969	Gelhaar v. State	163 N.W.2d 609	60
1966	Oseman v. State	32 Wis. 2d 523	57
1971	Nicholas v. State	183 N.W.2d 11	54
1976	Loveday v. State	247 N.W.2d 116	52

Showing the 15 most-cited of 505 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 Leo B. Hanley on?: Leo B. Hanley 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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12 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).