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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 2004 / Served to 2008

Louis B. Butler Jr.

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

Louis B. Butler Jr. was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court (7 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1952 · age 74
Tenure: 2004–2008 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Lawrence University
Mount Mary University

Judicial Record

In our data, Butler authored 48 published opinions for the court (2004–2008), plus 17 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Knapp (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. 104 of these were attributed to Butler 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
2005	State v. Knapp†	2005 WI 127	138
2007	State v. Mayo· Concurrence†	2007 WI 78	132
2005	State v. Dubose· Concurrence†	2005 WI 126	130
2006	State v. Young· Concurrence†	2006 WI 98	122
2005	State v. Love†	2005 WI 116	120
2005	Clean Wisconsin, Inc. v. Public Service Commission· Concurrence†	2005 WI 93	112
2007	State v. Jenkins· Concurrence†	2007 WI 96	103
2008	State v. Plude· Concurrence†	2008 WI 58	96
2006	Bartholomew v. Wisconsin Patients Compensation Fund & Compcare Health Services Insurance· Concurrence†	293 Wis. 2d 38	94
2006	Wisconsin Auto Title Loans, Inc. v. Jones· Concurrence†	2006 WI 53	90
2006	State v. Kelty· Concurrence†	2006 WI 101	85
2006	Dairyland Greyhound Park, Inc. v. Doyle†	2006 WI 107	81
2005	State v. Jerrell C.J.· Concurrence†	2005 WI 105	80
2005	State v. Hale· Concurrence†	2005 WI 7	80
2005	Thomas Ex Rel. Gramling v. Mallett†	2005 WI 129	79

Showing the 15 most-cited of 110 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 Louis B. Butler Jr. on?: Louis B. Butler Jr. 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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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).