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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1957 / Served to 1966

Thomas Edward Fairchild

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

Thomas Edward Fairchild was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court (7 judges, selected by nonpartisan election), who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1912–2007
Tenure: 1957–1966 · 9 yrs
Education: Cornell 1934

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Mount Mary University
Cornell University	A.B.	1934

Judicial Record

In our data, Fairchild authored 97 published opinions for the court (1958–1966), plus 32 dissents and 26 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Shoffner (98 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. 156 of these were attributed to Fairchild 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
1966	State v. Shoffner†	31 Wis. 2d 412	98
1959	Haumschild v. Continental Casualty Co.· Concurrence†	7 Wis. 2d 130	94
1959	Puhl v. Milwaukee Automobile Insurance· Dissent†	8 Wis. 2d 343	86
1962	State v. Esser†	16 Wis. 2d 567	85
1960	Affett v. Milwaukee & Suburban Transport Corp.· Concurrence†	11 Wis. 2d 604	75
1962	Holt v. State· Concurrence†	17 Wis. 2d 468	74
1965	Schilling v. Stockel· Concurrence†	26 Wis. 2d 525	64
1962	State Ex Rel. Reynolds v. Nusbaum· Dissent†	17 Wis. 2d 148	55
1963	McCauley v. Tropic of Cancer†	20 Wis. 2d 134	52
1965	National Farmers Union Property & Casualty Co. v. Maca†	26 Wis. 2d 399	48
1966	State v. Milwaukee Braves, Inc.†	31 Wis. 2d 699	42
1960	State Ex Rel. Reynolds v. County Court· Concurrence†	11 Wis. 2d 560	38
1964	Wolke v. Fleming· Concurrence†	24 Wis. 2d 606	35
1961	Gregory v. Anderson· Dissent†	14 Wis. 2d 130	35
1966	Volunteers of America of Madison, Inc. v. Industrial Commission· Dissent†	30 Wis. 2d 607	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 156 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 Thomas Edward Fairchild on?: Thomas Edward Fairchild 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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9 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).