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 / Former Justice

Elizabeth A. McClanahan

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Elizabeth A. McClanahan was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 2011. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1959 · age 67
Tenure: 2011 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

College of William and Mary
University of Dayton

Judicial Record

In our data, McClanahan authored 30 published opinions for the court (2011–2019), plus 2 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Gerald, T. v. Commonwealth (639 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. 33 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
2018	Gerald, T. v. Commonwealth†	813 S.E.2d 722	639
2017	Dietz v. Commonwealth†	804 S.E.2d 309	73
2017	Hilton v. Commonwealth†	797 S.E.2d 781	56
2016	Parrish v. Fed. Nat'l Mortg. Ass'n· Concurrence†	787 S.E.2d 116	56
2018	Curley v. Commonwealth†	816 S.E.2d 587	45
2019	A.H. v. Church of God in Christ, Inc.· Concurrence†	831 S.E.2d 460	38
2017	Coutlakis v. CSX Transportation, Inc.· Concurrence†	796 S.E.2d 556	34
2018	CGI Federal Inc. v. FCi Federal, Inc.†	814 S.E.2d 183	33
2015	REVI, LLC v. Chicago Title Insurance Co.· Concurrence†	776 S.E.2d 808	33
2017	Mount Aldie, LLC v. Land Trust of Va., Inc.†	796 S.E.2d 549	32
2017	Gelber v. Glock†	800 S.E.2d 800	30
2017	Gilliam v. Immel†	795 S.E.2d 458	27
2016	Thorsen v. Richmond Soc'y for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals· Dissent†	786 S.E.2d 453	27
2011	Montgomery County v. DRPT	719 S.E.2d 294	27
2018	Terry v. Irish Fleet, Inc.†	818 S.E.2d 788	26

Showing the 15 most-cited of 38 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 A. McClanahan on?: Elizabeth A. McClanahan 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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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).