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 2011 / Active

Cleo E. Powell

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Cleo E. Powell is a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, serving since 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: Since 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2011	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Powell authored 30 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 2 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Pijor v. Commonwealth (451 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. 30 of these were attributed to Powell 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
2017	Pijor v. Commonwealth†	808 S.E.2d 408	451
2016	Du v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	790 S.E.2d 493	322
2017	Carter v. Commonwealth†	800 S.E.2d 498	130
2016	Parrish v. Fed. Nat'l Mortg. Ass'n· Concurrence†	787 S.E.2d 116	56
2016	Miller & Rhoads Bldg., L.L.C. v. City of Richmond†	790 S.E.2d 484	46
2017	Coutlakis v. CSX Transportation, Inc.†	796 S.E.2d 556	34
2012	Brandon v. Cox	726 S.E.2d 298	28
2012	Envtl. Staffing v. B & R Const. Mgmt.	725 S.E.2d 550	28
2016	City of Richmond v. Va. Elec. & Power Co.· Concurrence†	787 S.E.2d 161	27
2016	Dorman v. State Industries, Inc.†	787 S.E.2d 132	26
2016	EMAC, L.L.C. v. County of Hanover· Dissent†	781 S.E.2d 181	23
2012	Ospta v. Summit Group Properties	724 S.E.2d 718	22
2016	Small v. Commonwealth†	788 S.E.2d 702	20
2018	Severance v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	816 S.E.2d 277	19
2017	Kim v. Commonwealth†	797 S.E.2d 766	19

Showing the 15 most-cited of 35 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 is Cleo E. Powell on?: Cleo E. Powell is a Chief 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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15 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).