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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1878 / Served to 1893

David J. Baker

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

David J. Baker was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1878. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1834–1899
Tenure: 1878–1893 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1878	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Baker authored 127 published opinions for the court (1878–1990), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Mittelman v. Witous (174 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. 123 of these were attributed to Baker 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
1990	Mittelman v. Witous	552 N.E.2d 973	174
1892	City of Chicago v. Babcock†	143 Ill. 358	120
1892	Gibson v. Leonard†	143 Ill. 182	110
1878	Ottawa, Oswego & Fox River Valley R. R. v. McMath†	91 Ill. 104	89
1890	Elmore v. Drainage Commissioners†	135 Ill. 269	66
1951	Welch v. Davis	101 N.E.2d 547	52
1878	City of Aurora v. Hillman†	90 Ill. 61	42
1892	Davidson v. Burke†	143 Ill. 139	39
1965	Little v. Chicago Hoist & Body Co.	203 N.E.2d 902	37
1890	Purdy v. Hall†	134 Ill. 298	36
1878	Haas v. Chicago Building Society†	89 Ill. 498	36
1892	Kirby v. Runals†	140 Ill. 289	35
1889	Germania Fire Insurance v. Klewer†	129 Ill. 599	34
1889	Mettler v. Miller†	129 Ill. 630	34
1889	Juilliard v. May†	130 Ill. 87	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 128 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 David J. Baker on?: David J. Baker 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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15 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).