Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor Running for Wisconsin Supreme Court: Justice for the People
Judge Chris Taylor served in the Wisconsin State Assembly before becoming a Dane County Circuit Court judge and now serves on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
by Jonathan Gramling
Judge Chris Taylor, who is a candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has seen the law from many sides: as a private attorney for 15 years, as a legislator for eight years and as a circuit court and an appellate court judge. Through that journey, she has developed an appreciation for the law, the role it plays in society and its impact on the citizens of Wisconsin.
Taylor ran for the state legislature when Act 10 was passed by the Wisconsin legislature, taking away union rights for most public employees.
“Joe Parisi had gotten elected to Dane County Executive in April 2011,” Taylor recalled. “So the state position came open. And like so many women, other people were the ones to broach the idea to me. I didn’t think of it. I had a friend who kept saying, ‘This seat’s open. You’d be good. You should try it.’ I would say, ‘I haven’t run for anything. I don’t know.’ I decided I would go for it. I was in a six-way primary. And I got through that election and then I served nine years in the legislature. It was a privilege.”
Over time, Taylor realized that her true passion was the law and the courtroom.
“By 2020, I was really missing the courtroom,” Taylor said. “And I thought I could do more good for people being a judge, making sure people were heard, making sure they got a fair chance and that I did what I could to deliver justice to people. I had always really been interested in the judiciary as a young lawyer. I think I didn’t know how to get there until I ran for the state legislature and realized, ‘Oh, you can run for office. It’s not so scarry.’ I think, in some ways, the judiciary was my natural home and the legislature was a bit of a detour in my legal path. Both, however, had been so critically important to me. I’m a better judge because I was in the legislature. And I saw the impact of laws — or the lack of laws — on people’s lives. And so I had such close constituent contact that every day, I was seeing the impact of policies on people. And so that is something that I never forgot as a judge. The decisions that I make are impacting real people with real consequences.”
Taylor has served as an appellate court judge since 2023 and has witnessed how crucial the rule of law is to the structure of society and people’s every day lives.
“The rule of law is the whole foundation for our democracy,” Taylor emphasized. “And what it means is that every person is subjected to the same rules, the same laws. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how powerful you are, the laws are what rule our society, not violence, not coups, and military takeovers and revolutions — although we certainly had a revolution to get to the rule of law. But it is so important in a democracy, a peaceful democracy that we are all subjected to the same rules, the same principles that actually unite us. It’s the commonality that we share that we are all subject to these rules and they should apply equally to everyone. That is the rule of law. I still believe in it. We have to fight for it. We have to make sure that every person is accountable. It doesn’t matter how powerful you are or how much money you have. You are accountable when you break the law.”
In a democracy, the Constitution — which all judges, federal and state are sworn to uphold — protects minorities, be they racial, ethnic or gender based, from the tyranny of the majority.
“Courts are so important in protecting the rights of the minority, sometimes against the majority,” Taylor said. “Courts are not supposed to pay attention to who is the most powerful. We’re supposed to look at the individuals and the cases before us and make sure we’re applying the laws fairly and consistently as we can with always an eye towards justice. And that is extraordinarily important that justice is what guides us. The law guides us for sure. But it’s that administration of justice under the law that guides us. And that is what I love so much about the judiciary. It doesn’t matter what political party is in charge. It shouldn’t matter. No matter your gender, race, ethnicity, or religion, you are to be treated fairly as a human being and subject to all of the constitutional rights and laws that should apply to everyone.”
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling on President Donald Trump imposing tariffs independent of Congress revealed the need for an independent judiciary. Two of Trump’s appointments voted against him and Trump’s reaction was almost like they owed it to him to vote in his favor.
“I think it is critically important that our judiciary is independent,” Taylor said. “When I was in the legislature, I saw the consequences of having a state Supreme Court that acted politically and would not hold the legislature accountable when they passed laws, some of which I had real questions about their constitutionality. Some of those laws have now been struck down by a more independent state Supreme Court. No court can be in the pocket of the executive or the legislature. And that is because our job in the judiciary is to hold those branches of government accountable when they act unlawfully or unconstitutionally. That’s why our independence is so important. Now unfortunately, what we have seen is this politicization, particularly at the U.S. Supreme Court level. They seem to have abandoned the people. They seem to have abandoned holding the executive and the legislature — particularly the executive I would say — accountable. And because of that, it has never been more important that we have a strong state Supreme Court to protect our rights, to protect our democracy and to protect our state against this overreach we are seeing from the federal government. There are very few checks on this overreach. But guess what. The court’s one of them. And that is why I am running.”
While Taylor was elected to the Assembly as a Democrat in 2011, it is almost ironic that she is concerned about state’s rights and the overreach of the Trump administration.
“We have an opportunity in this race to elect someone — me — who has spent her 30-year career fighting for people’s rights, making sure people have access to the courts, making sure they are treated fairly and that we do justice for the people of this state and not prioritize the billionaires and the special interests,” Taylor said. “That is why I am running. I will be a justice for the people. I love people. I care about them deeply. And I certainly care about making sure our constitutional rights are respected in relation to everyone’s ability to exercise those rights, whether it be free speech, the right to peacefully protest, the right to walk down the street and not be subject to unreasonable government intrusion just because you are walking down the street, and our rights to make our personal, private health care decisions — not politicians making those decisions, but our right to make those decisions. So it has never been more important, in my lifetime, for us to have a strong Wisconsin Supreme Court that protects us, protects our democracy and our elections and stands up for our state and our people against the overreach of the federal government.”
A trend over the past few decades has been to look at the decisions of judges on the state and federal levels through the lens of whether they have Democratic or Republican roots. In the long run, this can have an erosive impact on the legitimacy of the judiciary.
”It is absolutely harmful to the Supreme Court to being viewed as partisan,” Taylor said. “This is what I absolutely love about the judiciary. The judiciary is accountable to the law and the constitution, not anything else except, I would say, to the people. We are elected and we are accountable to the people. But if the people don’t have faith in our decisions from the court, then where is our validity? We depend on the people having faith that we are going to be fair to them, that they are going to get a shot. And that is so important to me, that is so, so important. We have to fight to preserve that.”
One of the reasons for that, in Taylor’s view, is the infusion of special interest money into Wisconsin Supreme Court races. In 2025, a U.S. record $100 million was spent on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race
“Over the last decade and a half, there has been a stronghold on this state Supreme Court of a very far-right majority,” Taylor observed. “And I think that is a result of all of this special interest money coming into our elections. That can be stopped. That’s a matter for the legislature to address. When I was in the legislature, there was a real erosion on our campaign finance laws that prevented some of this money from coming in. And I stood up to oppose that erosion of our campaign finance laws because I didn’t think it was good for democracy. Now our court is actually striking down laws that are unconstitutional like the legislative maps that they determined were not constitutional because area within each of the districts was not contiguous. It was little spots of land and little lightning bolts and snakes. Our constitution says that the legislative districts have to be contiguous. They can’t have little weird things going on. And so they did that. They protected the attack on our elections in 2020. Remember there was an effort to overthrow our election, our valid election that everyone said was valid. And our state Supreme Court rejected that attempt by one vote. And that is going to come at us again.”
Taylor emphasized that it is the people of Wisconsin who are her constituency.
“People in the state of Wisconsin should vote for me because I care deeply about them,” Taylor said. “Our government is about them. The law is about them. And they deserve a justice who is going to stand up for them, who is going to defend their rights, who is going to defend their right to pick their elected representatives, not the other way around and who is going to stand up for our democracy and our state against the federal government. And that is what I am going to do as a Wisconsin State Supreme Court justice. I am going to be a justice for the people.”
The Wisconsin spring election is April 7th. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is on that ballot. The outcomes of all of these non-partisan races will impact people’s lives. The voters need to show up and be represented.