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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1951 / Served to 1961

George Washington Bristow

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

George Washington Bristow was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1894–1961
Tenure: 1951–1961 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Bristow authored 317 published opinions for the court (1951–1961), plus 10 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302 (560 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. 132 of these were attributed to Bristow 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
1959	Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302· Concurrence†	163 N.E.2d 89	560
1957	La Salle National Bank v. County of Cook†	145 N.E.2d 65	390
1960	Dini v. Naiditch	170 N.E.2d 881	268
1958	Martindell v. Lake Shore National Bank	154 N.E.2d 683	262
1952	Nye v. Nye· Dissent†	105 N.E.2d 300	198
1952	Grasse v. Dealer's Transport Co.†	106 N.E.2d 124	170
1958	Allen v. Meyer	152 N.E.2d 576	166
1961	Gannon v. Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railway Co.†	22 Ill. 2d 305	162
1954	Geneva Construction Co. v. Martin Transfer & Storage Co.†	122 N.E.2d 540	158
1954	Orlicki v. McCarthy	122 N.E.2d 513	135
1958	The People v. Schlenger	147 N.E.2d 316	127
1955	People v. Crump	125 N.E.2d 615	116
1957	People Ex Rel. Terry v. Fisher	145 N.E.2d 588	115
1960	Saunders v. Schultz	170 N.E.2d 163	110
1960	Schiro v. W. E. Gould & Co.	165 N.E.2d 286	106

Showing the 15 most-cited of 330 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 George Washington Bristow on?: George Washington Bristow 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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10 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).