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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1990 / Served to 2013

Charles E. Freeman

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Charles E. Freeman was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1990–2013 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Freeman authored 374 published opinions for the court (1958–2012), plus 89 dissents and 118 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Coleman (1,609 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. 254 of these were attributed to Freeman 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
1998	People v. Coleman	701 N.E.2d 1063	1,609
2009	People v. Hodges	912 N.E.2d 1204	1,202
2000	People v. Stacey· Dissent†	737 N.E.2d 626	745
1993	Kedzie and 103rd Currency Exchange, Inc. v. Hodge	619 N.E.2d 732	738
1992	Abrahamson v. Illinois Department of Professional Regulation	606 N.E.2d 1111	726
2005	Avery v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Concurrence†	835 N.E.2d 801	709
2002	Belleville Toyota, Inc. v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.· Dissent†	770 N.E.2d 177	631
2009	People v. Siguenza-Brito	920 N.E.2d 233	629
1996	People v. Gaultney· Dissent†	675 N.E.2d 102	583
2003	People v. Moore	797 N.E.2d 631	557
2008	Cinkus v. Village of Stickney Municipal Officers Electoral Board	886 N.E.2d 1011	555
1992	People v. Flores	606 N.E.2d 1078	538
1997	In Re Chicago Flood Litigation	680 N.E.2d 265	537
2004	Adams v. Northern Illinois Gas Co.	809 N.E.2d 1248	527
2001	People v. Caffey	792 N.E.2d 1163	527

Showing the 15 most-cited of 582 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 Charles E. Freeman on?: Charles E. Freeman 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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23 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).