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

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of Virginia / Joined 1991 / Served to 2010

Barbara Milano Keenan

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Barbara Milano Keenan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1991. She earned a law degree from George Washington University in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 1991–2010 · 18 yrs
Education: Cornell 1971 · George Washington

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

Cornell University	B.A.	1971
George Washington University	J.D.	1974

Judicial Record

In our data, Keenan authored 56 published opinions for the court (1991–2008), plus 13 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Porter v. Com. (300 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. 72 of these were attributed to Keenan 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
2008	Porter v. Com.· Dissent†	661 S.E.2d 415	300
1996	Goins v. Commonwealth†	470 S.E.2d 114	178
1999	Robinson v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	516 S.E.2d 475	116
2007	Almy v. Grisham†	639 S.E.2d 182	112
1995	Bottoms v. Bottoms· Dissent†	457 S.E.2d 102	93
1992	Mueller v. Commonwealth†	422 S.E.2d 380	92
2005	Alliance v. Com., Dept. of Environ. Quality†	621 S.E.2d 78	82
2003	Woods v. Mendez†	574 S.E.2d 263	72
2005	Com. v. Hilliard†	613 S.E.2d 579	64
1994	RF & P CORP. v. Little†	440 S.E.2d 908	64
1993	Huffman v. Love†	427 S.E.2d 357	58
2000	Mitchem v. Counts†	523 S.E.2d 246	57
1996	Morgen Industries, Inc. v. Vaughan†	471 S.E.2d 489	57
1994	Langman v. Alumni Association of the University†	247 Va. 491	57
2002	Pritchett v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	557 S.E.2d 205	51

Showing the 15 most-cited of 72 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 Supreme Court of Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Barbara Milano Keenan on?: Barbara Milano Keenan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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18 years on the Supreme Court of Virginia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).