How do judges of the Court of Appeals of Virginia reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Court of Appeals of Virginia / Joined 2003 / Served to 2011

Elizabeth A. McClanahan

Judge, Court of Appeals of Virginia

Elizabeth A. McClanahan was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, who joined the court in 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2003–2011 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Court of Appeals of Virginia	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McClanahan authored 77 published opinions for the court (2003–2011), plus 7 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Clanton v. Commonwealth (283 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. 24 of these were attributed to McClanahan 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	Clanton v. Commonwealth	673 S.E.2d 904	283
2004	Estate of Hackler v. Hackler	602 S.E.2d 426	128
2009	Arrington v. Commonwealth	674 S.E.2d 554	90
2005	Stevens v. Commonwealth	616 S.E.2d 754	70
2008	City of Waynesboro v. Griffin· Dissent†	657 S.E.2d 782	58
2005	Gonzales v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	611 S.E.2d 616	58
2008	Stacy v. Stacy	669 S.E.2d 348	55
2006	Colbert v. Commonwealth	624 S.E.2d 108	49
2004	Courembis v. Courembis· Concurrence†	595 S.E.2d 505	46
2005	Tuck v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.	623 S.E.2d 433	44
2008	Abney v. Commonwealth	657 S.E.2d 796	43
2006	Stiles v. Stiles	632 S.E.2d 607	43
2004	Widdifield v. Commonwealth†	600 S.E.2d 159	42
2005	Irwin v. Irwin	623 S.E.2d 438	40
2004	Wheeler v. Wheeler	591 S.E.2d 698	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 94 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 Court of Appeals of Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Elizabeth A. McClanahan on?: Elizabeth A. McClanahan was a Judge of the Court of Appeals 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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8 years on the Court of Appeals of Virginia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).