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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Wisconsin Supreme Court / Joined 1983 / Served to 2003

William A. Bablitch

Justice, Wisconsin Supreme Court

William A. Bablitch was a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1941–2011
Tenure: 1983–2003 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Wisconsin Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Mount Mary University
Mount Mary University

Judicial Record

In our data, Bablitch authored 236 published opinions for the court (1983–2003), plus 63 dissents and 43 concurrences. Most cited: Ball v. District No. 4, Area Board (363 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. 197 of these were attributed to Bablitch 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
1984	Ball v. District No. 4, Area Board· Dissent†	345 N.W.2d 389	363
1990	Vollmer v. Luety· Concurrence†	156 Wis. 2d 1	181
1985	State v. Wyss	370 N.W.2d 745	164
1995	State v. Carpenter· Concurrence†	541 N.W.2d 105	155
1990	Just v. Land Reclamation Ltd.	456 N.W.2d 570	155
1997	State v. Setagord· Dissent†	565 N.W.2d 506	154
1997	State v. McCallum†	561 N.W.2d 707	143
1986	State v. Fry· Dissent†	388 N.W.2d 565	139
1990	Smith v. Atlantic Mutual Insurance	456 N.W.2d 597	131
1984	State v. Woods	345 N.W.2d 457	131
1997	State v. Caban†	563 N.W.2d 501	127
2000	State v. Ward†	2000 WI 3	124
1985	Tahtinen v. MSI Insurance	361 N.W.2d 673	120
1984	Standard Theatres, Inc. v. State, Department of Transportation· Dissent†	349 N.W.2d 661	119
1988	State v. Sorenson· Concurrence†	421 N.W.2d 77	118

Showing the 15 most-cited of 342 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 William A. Bablitch on?: William A. Bablitch 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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20 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).