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 1989 / Served to 2007

Elizabeth B. Lacy

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Elizabeth B. Lacy was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1945 · age 81
Tenure: 1989–2007 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

Saint Mary's College
The University of Texas at Austin

Judicial Record

In our data, Lacy authored 440 published opinions for the court (1889–2012), plus 21 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Morrison v. Bestler (225 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. 108 of these were attributed to Lacy 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	Morrison v. Bestler	387 S.E.2d 753	225
1990	Eaton v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	397 S.E.2d 385	194
1993	Fun v. Virginia Military Institute	427 S.E.2d 181	157
2002	Eure v. Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp.· Dissent†	561 S.E.2d 663	154
2001	Singh v. Mooney	541 S.E.2d 549	146
1993	Buchanan v. Doe· Concurrence†	431 S.E.2d 289	139
1999	Prospect Development Co. v. Bershader· Concurrence†	515 S.E.2d 291	138
2000	Bass v. Commonwealth	525 S.E.2d 921	136
2002	TM Delmarva Power, L.L.C. v. NCP of Virginia, L.L.C.· Dissent†	557 S.E.2d 199	134
1999	Walker v. Commonwealth	515 S.E.2d 565	133
2010	Gheorghiu v. Com.	701 S.E.2d 407	125
1989	Simmons v. Commonwealth	380 S.E.2d 656	124
1994	Buck v. Commonwealth	443 S.E.2d 414	118
1991	Colby v. Boyden†	241 Va. 125	114
2002	Commonwealth v. Vaughn†	557 S.E.2d 220	112

Showing the 15 most-cited of 476 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 Elizabeth B. Lacy on?: Elizabeth B. Lacy 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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18 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).