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 1957 / Served to 1974

Harold Fleming Snead

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Harold Fleming Snead was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1957. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1903–1987
Tenure: 1957–1974 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1957	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

University of Richmond
University of Richmond

Judicial Record

In our data, Snead authored 283 published opinions for the court (1957–1974), plus 4 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Prillaman v. Commonwealth (115 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. 253 of these were attributed to Snead 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
1957	Prillaman v. Commonwealth†	199 Va. 401	115
1964	Miles v. Commonwealth†	205 Va. 462	87
1964	Daniels v. Truck & Equipment Corp.†	205 Va. 579	70
1962	Horne v. Superior Life Insurance Company†	123 S.E.2d 401	68
1959	Harrison v. Day· Dissent†	106 S.E.2d 636	67
1962	Richardson v. Paxton Company†	127 S.E.2d 113	66
1973	Willard v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.†	213 Va. 481	60
1971	Robinson v. Commonwealth†	212 Va. 136	57
1973	McCormick v. Romans†	198 S.E.2d 651	56
1963	Central Surety & Insurance Corporation v. Elder†	129 S.E.2d 651	56
1967	Wilson v. Whittaker†	154 S.E.2d 124	54
1957	Smith v. Farrell†	199 Va. 121	52
1969	CORRETT v. Commonwealth†	210 Va. 304	49
1959	Harrison v. Day†	107 S.E.2d 594	48
1957	Simpson v. Commonwealth†	199 Va. 549	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 288 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 Harold Fleming Snead on?: Harold Fleming Snead 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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17 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).