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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Appellate Court of Illinois / Joined 1969 / Served to 1976

George Neves Leighton

Justice, Appellate Court of Illinois

George Neves Leighton was a Justice of the Appellate Court of Illinois, who joined the court in 1969. He earned a law degree from Harvard University in 1946. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1912 · age 114
Tenure: 1969–1976 · 7 yrs
Education: Howard 1940 · Harvard 1946

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Appellate Court of Illinois	–	–

Education

Howard University	A.B.	1940
Harvard University	LL.B.	1946

Judicial Record

In our data, Leighton authored 58 published opinions for the court (1970–1976), plus 6 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Trice v. Chicago Housing Authority (54 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. 66 of these were attributed to Leighton 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
1973	Trice v. Chicago Housing Authority· Dissent†	302 N.E.2d 207	54
1976	Rosenbaum v. Rosenbaum†	349 N.E.2d 73	34
1973	Dendor v. Board of Fire & Police Commissioners†	11 Ill. App. 3d 582	29
1972	People v. Wright· Dissent†	279 N.E.2d 398	28
1971	People v. McGreal†	4 Ill. App. 3d 312	25
1974	Citizens Utilities Co. v. Metropolitan Sanitary District†	322 N.E.2d 857	24
1975	People v. Nichols†	327 N.E.2d 186	22
1975	Urban Investment & Development Co. v. Maurice L. Rothschild & Co.†	323 N.E.2d 588	21
1974	People v. Hister†	314 N.E.2d 562	16
1974	People v. McChristian†	309 N.E.2d 388	16
1976	People v. Scott· Dissent†	343 N.E.2d 517	13
1971	People v. Sullivan†	132 Ill. App. 2d 674	13
1975	People v. Parra· Dissent†	340 N.E.2d 636	12
1973	O'Brien v. Dopak†	17 Ill. App. 3d 6	10
1972	In Re Estate of Marcucci†	285 N.E.2d 141	10

Showing the 15 most-cited of 66 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 Appellate Court of Illinois reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was George Neves Leighton on?: George Neves Leighton was a Justice of the Appellate Court of Illinois.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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7 years on the Appellate Court of Illinois. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).