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 1961 / Served to 2003

Harry L. Carrico

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Harry L. Carrico was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1961. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2013
Tenure: 1961–2003 · 42 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1961	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

George Washington University
George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Carrico authored 572 published opinions for the court (1907–2011), plus 60 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: Tomko v. Michael's Plastering Co. (416 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. 370 of these were attributed to Carrico 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
1970	Tomko v. Michael's Plastering Co.	210 Va. 697	416
1984	Wilson v. Holyfield· Dissent†	313 S.E.2d 396	257
2008	Maxwell v. Com.	657 S.E.2d 499	204
1992	Satcher v. Commonwealth	421 S.E.2d 821	188
1987	Townes v. Commonwealth†	362 S.E.2d 650	187
1981	Locke v. Johns-Manville Corp.	275 S.E.2d 900	155
1982	Naccash v. Burger†	223 Va. 406	145
2009	Cooper v. Com.	673 S.E.2d 185	128
1999	Robinson v. Commonwealth	516 S.E.2d 475	116
1993	Jones v. R. S. Jones & Associates, Inc.	431 S.E.2d 33	116
1991	George v. Commonwealth	411 S.E.2d 12	115
1961	Snyder v. Commonwealth†	202 Va. 1009	109
1983	Bunch v. Commonwealth†	304 S.E.2d 271	107
1998	Commonwealth v. Zamani	507 S.E.2d 608	104
1964	City of Fairfax v. Shanklin	205 Va. 227	104

Showing the 15 most-cited of 638 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 Harry L. Carrico on?: Harry L. Carrico 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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42 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).