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 1982 / Served to 1991

Charles S. Russell

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Charles S. Russell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1926 · age 100
Tenure: 1982–1991 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Russell authored 283 published opinions for the court (1982–2012), plus 33 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Williams v. Com. (612 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. 130 of these were attributed to Russell 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
2009	Williams v. Com.	677 S.E.2d 280	612
1990	Spencer v. Commonwealth	393 S.E.2d 609	320
2010	Sullivan v. Com.	701 S.E.2d 61	297
1985	Chaves v. Johnson	335 S.E.2d 97	279
1983	LeVasseur v. Commonwealth†	304 S.E.2d 644	272
1988	Sensenbrenner v. Rust, Orling & Neale, Architects, Inc.	374 S.E.2d 55	245
1983	Berry v. Klinger†	300 S.E.2d 792	226
1989	Etheridge v. Medical Center Hospitals· Dissent†	376 S.E.2d 525	201
1983	Kamlar Corp. v. Haley†	299 S.E.2d 514	200
1990	Eaton v. Commonwealth	397 S.E.2d 385	194
1984	Essex v. Commonwealth	322 S.E.2d 216	189
1983	Virginia Real Estate Commission v. Bias†	308 S.E.2d 123	181
1987	Miller v. Sevamp, Inc.†	362 S.E.2d 915	180
1982	Epperly v. Commonwealth†	294 S.E.2d 882	179
1984	Scott v. Commonwealth	323 S.E.2d 572	172

Showing the 15 most-cited of 323 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 Charles S. Russell on?: Charles S. Russell 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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9 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).