Wisconsin’s courts play a vital role in protecting our rights and upholding the rule of law. State courts hear approximately 95% of all cases, including matters involving families, contracts, criminal law, voting rights, juvenile justice, and constitutional questions. They are the final arbiters of state law and the Wisconsin Constitution.The Wisconsin Court of Appeals consists of 16 judges serving in four districts. The Court of Appeals serves as the intermediate appellate court. It hears cases appealed from the circuit courts. The court will only overrule trial court decisions to fix important legal or procedural errors. Voters elect Court of Appeals judges to serve six-year terms. There is no term limit.Learn more
Committee
Judge Joe Donald
Campaign Phone
4144696484
Education
Marquette University Law School 1988
As a child, I grew up in two different worlds. My family and I lived In Milwaukee’s Harambee neighborhood. My mother was also a housekeeper for a family who lived on Milwaukee’s Lake Drive. As a young child I often went to work with her and played with a child my age. During my high school years, this family had a coach house, where I lived with my parents, enabling me to attend Shorewood High School.
These experiences allowed me to recognize and experience firsthand the huge chasm that exists between two Milwaukee neighborhoods, just a mile apart. I feel very fortunate to have attended Shorewood High school.
Because of these experiences, I developed a profound and lasting commitment to fairness, resulting in me having a strong commitment for treating everyone impartially, with dignity and respect.
I will continue to push for having a strong, independent, fair, and impartial court that’s free of legislative or executive overreach, ensuring that our courts provide and protect access to justice for all, and our rights under the Constitution. I value maintaining an essential balance in our government, with the appropriate checks and balances, which is a necessary for a healthy democracy.
I will continue do what I’ve always done and what I believe I’ve managed to do for the past 29 and a half years I’ve served as a judge, which is to treat everyone with dignity and respect—and bring a modicum of common sense to the process of deciding cases. I know what it’s like to be marginalized—and not be seen or heard.
Basically, I believe the general fundamental factors for the court of appeals consist of a decisional tree of questions. What are the facts and the law, and did the lower court appropriately apply them? If so, do you affirm? If not, do you remand and/or reverse? If the law is unclear or undeveloped, do we, as the intermediate error correcting court, step into that lane of law development and address the issue? Or do we just pass the issue onto the Supreme Court by certifying the issue to them?
Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor are my most admired justices, primarily because of the strength and power of the language contained within their dissents.
