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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1933 / Served to 1942

Elwyn Riley Shaw

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Elwyn Riley Shaw was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1933. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1888–1950
Tenure: 1933–1942 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1933	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Judicial Record

In our data, Shaw authored 8 published opinions for the court (1933–1937), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Provenzano v. Illinois Central Railroad (14 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. 9 of these were attributed to Shaw 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
1934	Provenzano v. Illinois Central Railroad†	357 Ill. 192	14
1933	Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad v. Commerce Commission ex rel. Department of Public Works & Buildings· Dissent†	354 Ill. 58	10
1933	Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Commerce Commission ex rel. Village of Belle Rive†	353 Ill. 375	5
1935	Huff v. Illinois Central Railroad†	362 Ill. 95	4
1935	People ex rel. Applen v. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad†	360 Ill. 433	4
1937	Wilson v. Chicago & Western Indiana Railroad†	365 Ill. 405	1
1936	Ætna Insurance v. Illinois Central Railroad†	365 Ill. 303	1
1937	Baltimore & Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad v. Industrial Commission†	366 Ill. 223	0
1935	People ex rel. Applen v. New York Central Railroad†	360 Ill. 453	0

Showing the 9 most-cited of 9 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 Elwyn Riley Shaw on?: Elwyn Riley Shaw was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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9 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).