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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1984 / Served to 2001

Benjamin Miller

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Benjamin Miller was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1984. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1984–2001 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Miller authored 325 published opinions for the court (1954–2001), plus 89 dissents and 83 concurrences. Most cited: Outboard Marine Corp. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance (1,920 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. 191 of these were attributed to Miller 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
1992	Outboard Marine Corp. v. Liberty Mutual Insurance· Concurrence†	607 N.E.2d 1204	1,920
1997	Best v. Taylor MacHine Works· Concurrence†	689 N.E.2d 1057	571
1998	People v. Bull· Concurrence†	705 N.E.2d 824	417
1993	People v. Hudson· Concurrence†	626 N.E.2d 161	390
1997	People v. Woodard· Dissent†	677 N.E.2d 935	387
1998	Dowd & Dowd, Ltd. v. Gleason	693 N.E.2d 358	368
1996	People v. Washington· Dissent†	665 N.E.2d 1330	364
1996	Rein v. David A. Noyes & Co.	665 N.E.2d 1199	349
1990	People v. Smith· Dissent†	565 N.E.2d 900	340
1996	Advincula v. United Blood Services· Dissent†	678 N.E.2d 1009	324
1991	Fellhauer v. City of Geneva	568 N.E.2d 870	312
1989	People v. Caballero· Concurrence†	533 N.E.2d 1089	310
1995	People v. Coleman· Concurrence†	660 N.E.2d 919	297
1992	People v. Pasch· Concurrence†	604 N.E.2d 294	295
1991	People v. Thingvold· Dissent†	584 N.E.2d 89	265

Showing the 15 most-cited of 497 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 Illinois Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Benjamin Miller on?: Benjamin Miller was a Justice of the Illinois 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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17 years on the Illinois Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).