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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1976 / Served to 1978

James A. Dooley

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

James A. Dooley was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1914–1978
Tenure: 1976–1978 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dooley authored 38 published opinions for the court (1976–1978), plus 23 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Steinberg v. Chicago Medical School (481 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. 41 of these were attributed to Dooley 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
1977	Steinberg v. Chicago Medical School	371 N.E.2d 634	481
1976	Public Finance Corp. v. Davis· Dissent†	360 N.E.2d 765	340
1978	Skinner v. Reed-Prentice Division Package MacHinery Co.· Dissent†	374 N.E.2d 437	313
1977	Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital· Concurrence†	367 N.E.2d 1250	211
1977	Bio-Medical Laboratories, Inc. v. Trainor· Dissent†	370 N.E.2d 223	199
1978	Buehler v. Whalen	374 N.E.2d 460	160
1977	People v. Jenkins	370 N.E.2d 532	143
1977	La Throp v. Bell Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n· Dissent†	370 N.E.2d 188	130
1977	People v. Trinkle	369 N.E.2d 888	126
1977	M.F.A. Mutual Insurance v. Cheek	363 N.E.2d 809	111
1977	People v. Jackson	371 N.E.2d 602	107
1977	Baltimore & Ohio Railroad v. Mosele· Dissent†	368 N.E.2d 88	95
1977	Howlett v. Scott· Dissent†	370 N.E.2d 1036	85
1978	People v. Smith	374 N.E.2d 472	78
1977	West American Insurance v. Sal E. Lobianco & Son Co.	370 N.E.2d 804	78

Showing the 15 most-cited of 72 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 A. Dooley on?: James A. Dooley 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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1 year 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).