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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1895 / Served to 1924

James H. Cartwright

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

James H. Cartwright was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1895. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1842–1924
Tenure: 1895–1924 · 29 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1895	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Judicial Record

In our data, Cartwright authored 1,786 published opinions for the court (1896–1924), plus 22 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: In re Day (144 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. 1,804 of these were attributed to Cartwright 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
1899	In re Day†	181 Ill. 73	144
1909	Seith v. Commonwealth Electric Co.†	241 Ill. 252	114
1908	Illinois Glass Co. v. Chicago Telephone Co.†	234 Ill. 535	91
1899	National Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Home Savings Bank†	181 Ill. 35	88
1920	Opp v. Pryor†	294 Ill. 538	86
1900	Lightcap v. Bradley†	186 Ill. 510	86
1906	People ex rel. Breckon v. Board of Election Commissioners†	221 Ill. 9	85
1906	Merchants' National Bank v. Nichols & Shepard Co.†	223 Ill. 41	82
1897	Martin v. Martin†	170 Ill. 18	80
1909	Krieger v. Aurora, Elgin & Chicago Railroad†	242 Ill. 544	79
1903	Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad v. Heerey†	203 Ill. 492	79
1897	Chicago & Northwestern Railway Co. v. Hansen†	166 Ill. 623	78
1902	City of Joliet v. Alexander†	194 Ill. 457	74
1902	Woodhouse v. Crandall†	197 Ill. 104	73
1900	People ex rel. Stuckart v. Knopf†	183 Ill. 410	71

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,812 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 James H. Cartwright on?: James H. Cartwright 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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29 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).