WI Supreme Court debate 3/11/2025.

WI Right to Life Candidate Comparisons Spring 2025

Dane County Circuit Court judge since 2018.

Former Assistant State Attorney General and Chief Legal Counsel to Governor Jim Doyle (D).

In 2015 as an attorney for the League of Women Voters, Susan Crawford called voter ID a "poll tax".

Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin endorsed Susan Crawford, stating “'Judge Susan Crawford has spent her entire career working to uphold the Constitution,' said Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin President Tanya Atkinson. 'Once again, access to essential health care and bodily autonomy hang in the balance. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin is proud to stand alongside a leader committed to reproductive freedom. Judge Susan Crawford’s values align with the people of Wisconsin, and she is the right choice to be our next State Supreme Court Justice.'” 

Susan Crawford’s campaign platform highlights:

• Protection of Wisconsinites “basic rights and freedoms”: “Those rights are threatened by an all-out effort to politicize the court to drive a right-wing agenda - I believe Wisconsin deserves better.” 
• Prioritizing community safety in judicial decisions: “I also believe people in Wisconsin deserve to feel safe as they go about their lives - in their homes, driving down the road, or walking to the grocery store. My top priority in making decisions is always to make our communities safer.”
• Preserving the makeup of the current Supreme Court: “For the first time in years, we have a majority on the court focused on getting the facts right, following the law, and protecting our constitutional rights. We can’t risk having that progress reversed.”
• Commitment to an impartial, fair judiciary that uses common sense: “As a former prosecutor and a judge, I know we need Supreme Court justices who understand what it takes to keep communities safe, who are impartial and fair, who will use common sense, and who won’t politicize the constitution to undermine our most basic rights.”
  

Judicial Philosophy 

"I’m a pragmatist, and that means I pay really close attention to the context of the decision that I am making. I don’t look at legal decisions as abstract principles."
— Susan Crawford

Judicial Philosophy

"I view myself as a really common-sense judge. So I focus on, first of all, making sure that I know what the facts are in any case. I’ve listened to the evidence and just determine what the truth is. I think that’s a really important first step for any judge. And then, of course, I make sure I get the law right after listening to the lawyers tell me what their positions are. And then I have to make a decision after I have those two things established and I pay a lot of attention to how my decision is going to impact the people in a case. The decisions I make are not abstract principles. They are going to affect real people’s lives. So I do pay close attention to the context of my decisions. And taking that up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I will also consider how the decisions that I’m involved in as a justice will be applied in future cases, because at the Supreme Court level, those cases are precedent. And you have to think ahead to other applications." — Susan Crawford

Judicial Philosophy

"All the experience that I bring to this race, from being a prosecutor — from standing up in court for people when the rights were taken away from them by the government, and now as a circuit court judge, making sure that I'm making fair decisions, applying the law and protecting people's rights every day — I think that's great preparation for me to be on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

My approach to making decisions as a judge is pretty straightforward. I make sure that I get the facts right, because the truth is a really important value in our justice system, and I make sure that I'm applying the law correctly after listening to the lawyers in the case make their presentations to me and tell me what they think and how they think the law should be interpreted. Ultimately, my job is to determine that, and then when I make a decision, to apply some common sense and make sure that the law is being applied to protect the rights of the people before me. 

I'd like to pivot to just say that my opponent in this race, Brad Schimel, is a longtime partisan politician with a pretty extreme agenda, and he is running this race for Wisconsin Supreme Court very much as if it were a partisan race…That's just not what the Supreme Court is for. It's there to protect the rights of all Wisconsinites under our laws and our Constitution, and that's why I'm running." — Susan Crawford

Nature and Limits of the Judiciary

Judge Crawford said she would not automatically recuse herself from abortion cases after representing Planned Parenthood, stating, “The law does not require judges to automatically recuse themselves simply because they have previously done legal work as a lawyer.”

"How would you define the distinction between [judicial conservative and judicial liberal]?"

"You know, I think that kind of shorthand is actually not that useful. What I do is just try to be fair and impartial in every case and apply the law to, you know, the facts that I’ve determined to be true in the way that does justice and protects the interests in the case, the people in the case, the way the law was intended."— Susan Crawford

"What are the factors that you would look at when you decide to overturn a case history?"

"Yeah, well, I have not been in a position to do that, of course, because I’m currently a circuit court judge. And on the circuit court, we are required to apply precedent. I think that as a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, what I would do, first of all, if asked to overturn precedent, is to consider what the attorney’s arguments are in favor or against doing so. You know, typically, justices are not coming to that conclusion on their own. They’re doing it because one of the parties in the case is asking them to overturn a prior precedent on grounds that it was wrongly decided. So the first thing I would do in a particular case is determine how I think the law ought to be applied in that case, and often there’s not a need to actually overturn a precedent, but rather to distinguish it, to say, well, there are some different facts in that case, and maybe it should be applied more narrowly or there’s an exception that can be made in this new case. So I think it’s a rare instance where a precedent actually has to be overturned. But, you know, I would do the same thing I just described. I would look at the facts of the case, listen to the legal arguments on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I would certainly listen to what my fellow justices had to say and what their positions were before making an important decision like that to actually overturn a precedent."— Susan Crawford

As a judge, Susan Crawford "...declared unconstitutional [Wisconsin Acts 369 and 370] passed by a Republican legislative majority that limited the power of the Democratic Wisconsin attorney general."  

Judge Crawford wrote, "It is more accurate to characterize [the statute] as granting absolute power to the Legislature, far greater than a ‘seat at the table’ alongside the prosecutor[.]” She further "said the legislative committee’s ability to reject a settlement agreement essentially gives it unchecked veto powers the attorney general cannot override, which 'gives the attorney general no recourse but to continue litigation or attempt to renegotiate a settlement on terms demanded by the Legislature’s joint finance committee.'"

As an attorney, Crawford represented Planned Parenthood in lawsuits challenging legislation that places restrictions on abortion access. See: Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Inc. v. Van Hollen, 738 F.3d 786 (7th Cir. 2013) 

Regarding her work representing Planned Parenthood Crawford stated, "I'm proud of the work that I did as a lawyer in our courts fighting for people's rights, including Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and their doctors, to protect their right to deliver health care services to women without having to be in fear of felony prosecution for doing it."

Judge Crawford said "I think that Dobbs case was wrongly decided" further stating that "[I]t represents the first time, to my knowledge, that the United States Supreme Court has ever undone a long-standing, constitutionally vested right recognized under our U.S. Constitution. And I think that the case was poorly reasoned by the majority on the Supreme Court and that’s very well laid out in the dissent to that case."

Represented public-school teachers in opposing Wisconsin 2011 Act 10. 

 "I represented our public-school teachers in a legal challenge to Act 10. I was in court fighting for their rights in the workplace after the government took them away. Act 10, you know, the public I think kind of tends to think of it as like one uniform thing. It was a 50-page long bill that changed many different provisions of Wisconsin statutes. So if there were another case presented to me involving some part of Act 10, I would look at which part is being challenged there. Who are the parties bringing that action? And is that a case I can be fair and impartial on, a case where I have not previously taken a position on the specific issue being raised?" — Susan Crawford

Judge Crawford is a proponent of "restorative justice" and "diversion programs." She wrote,"Reducing racial disparities in Dane County’s criminal justice system will be my highest priority....I strongly support the use and expansion of restorative justice and diversion programs (like Drug Court) that hold people accountable while giving them a chance to avoid a conviction. I support bail reforms to make sure low-income people aren’t held in jail solely because they can’t make cash bail." 

Previously a partner at Pines Bach in Madison.