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 1978 / Served to 1981

Patrick W. Donlin

Judge, Court of Appeals of Wisconsin

Patrick W. Donlin was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Wisconsin, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1978–1981 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Court of Appeals of Wisconsin	–	–

Education

Saint Mary's College

Judicial Record

In our data, Donlin authored 51 published opinions for the court (1978–1981), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Patrick v. Head of the Lakes Cooperative Electric Ass'n (46 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. 13 of these were attributed to Donlin 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	Patrick v. Head of the Lakes Cooperative Electric Ass'n	295 N.W.2d 205	46
1979	Olson v. Ratzel†	278 N.W.2d 238	43
1980	Wisconsin's Environmental Decade, Inc. v. Public Service Commission	298 N.W.2d 205	28
1980	Ward v. Frito-Lay, Inc.	290 N.W.2d 536	26
1979	State v. Bentley	286 N.W.2d 153	24
1980	Herwig v. Enerson & Eggen	295 N.W.2d 201	19
1980	Seebach v. Public Service Commission	295 N.W.2d 753	19
1980	Keithley v. Keithley	289 N.W.2d 368	19
1981	Geocaris v. Surgical Consultants, Ltd.	302 N.W.2d 76	18
1980	Anderson v. Green Bay & Western Railroad	299 N.W.2d 615	17
1980	Rapids Associates v. Shopko Store, Inc.	292 N.W.2d 668	17
1980	Farmers Mill of Athens, Inc. v. Department of Industry, Labor & Human Relations	294 N.W.2d 39	16
1980	Bituminous Casualty Co. v. Department of Industry, Labor & Human Relations†	295 N.W.2d 183	15
1981	State v. Martin	302 N.W.2d 58	14
1979	Brotzman v. Brotzman†	283 N.W.2d 600	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 52 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 was Patrick W. Donlin on?: Patrick W. Donlin was 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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3 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).