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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1976 / Former Justice

Shirley S. Abrahamson

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

Shirley S. Abrahamson was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1976 · 50 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Abrahamson authored 575 published opinions for the court (1976–2019), plus 479 dissents and 411 concurrences. Most cited: State Ex Rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County (1,735 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. 1,116 of these were attributed to Abrahamson 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
2004	State Ex Rel. Kalal v. Circuit Court for Dane County· Concurrence†	2004 WI 58	1,735
1987	Green Spring Farms v. Kersten· Concurrence†	401 N.W.2d 816	901
1997	In RE MARRIAGE OF COOK v. Cook†	560 N.W.2d 246	598
1994	State v. Escalona-Naranjo· Dissent†	517 N.W.2d 157	361
1998	State v. Sullivan†	576 N.W.2d 30	360
1980	Grams v. Boss	294 N.W.2d 473	355
1985	State v. Pitsch	369 N.W.2d 711	288
1980	Wangen v. Ford Motor Co.	294 N.W.2d 437	282
2009	State v. Ndina†	2009 WI 21	263
2000	State v. Huebner· Dissent†	2000 WI 59	228
1992	State v. Knight	484 N.W.2d 540	213
2001	State v. Eason· Dissent†	2001 WI 98	208
2001	Martindale v. Ripp· Concurrence†	2001 WI 113	207
1980	Ollerman v. O'Rourke Co., Inc.	288 N.W.2d 95	206
1995	State v. Post· Dissent†	541 N.W.2d 115	203

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,465 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 Shirley S. Abrahamson on?: Shirley S. Abrahamson 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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50 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).