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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1996 / Former Justice

N. Patrick Crooks

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

N. Patrick Crooks was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1996 · 30 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Crooks authored 199 published opinions for the court (1996–2015), plus 52 dissents and 56 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Sullivan (360 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. 297 of these were attributed to Crooks 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
1998	State v. Sullivan· Dissent†	576 N.W.2d 30	360
2001	State v. Eason· Dissent†	2001 WI 98	208
2001	Martindale v. Ripp· Dissent†	2001 WI 113	207
2002	State v. Harvey· Concurrence†	2002 WI 93	200
1996	Management Computer Services, Inc. v. Hawkins, Ash, Baptie & Co.	557 N.W.2d 67	199
2001	Paul v. Skemp†	2001 WI 42	179
2003	Johnson Controls, Inc. v. Employers Insurance of Wausau· Concurrence†	2003 WI 108	177
2000	Aicher Ex Rel. LaBarge v. Wisconsin Patients Compensation Fund· Dissent†	2000 WI 98	151
2004	Wenke Ex Rel. Laufenberg v. Gehl Co.· Concurrence†	2004 WI 103	149
2001	Evelyn C. R. v. Tykila S.· Concurrence†	2001 WI 110	146
2001	Lambrecht v. Estate of Kaczmarczyk· Dissent†	2001 WI 25	146
2003	State v. Cole· Concurrence†	2003 WI 112	143
1999	Wausau Tile, Inc. v. County Concrete Corp.†	593 N.W.2d 445	139
2005	State v. Knapp· Concurrence†	2005 WI 127	138
2006	State v. Tiepelman†	2006 WI 66	134

Showing the 15 most-cited of 307 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 N. Patrick Crooks on?: N. Patrick Crooks 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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30 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).