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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1990 / Served to 2000

James Dee Heiple

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

James Dee Heiple was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1990. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1990–2000 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1990	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Bradley University

Judicial Record

In our data, Heiple authored 182 published opinions for the court (1991–2000), plus 97 dissents and 44 concurrences. Most cited: Connick v. Suzuki Motor Co., Ltd. (836 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. 155 of these were attributed to Heiple 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
1996	Connick v. Suzuki Motor Co., Ltd.	675 N.E.2d 584	836
1999	People v. Smith	708 N.E.2d 365	602
2000	People v. Hall· Concurrence†	743 N.E.2d 521	566
1998	People v. Bull· Concurrence†	705 N.E.2d 824	417
1992	Lee v. Chicago Transit Authority· Dissent†	605 N.E.2d 493	416
1995	People v. Arna	658 N.E.2d 445	405
1997	American States Insurance v. Koloms· Dissent†	687 N.E.2d 72	372
1994	People v. Novak· Dissent†	643 N.E.2d 762	347
1992	People v. Frieberg· Concurrence†	589 N.E.2d 508	332
2000	People v. Patterson· Concurrence†	735 N.E.2d 616	329
1996	Swick v. Liautaud	662 N.E.2d 1238	323
1994	Doe v. Calumet City· Concurrence†	641 N.E.2d 498	322
1994	Bonaguro v. the County Officers Electoral Board· Concurrence†	634 N.E.2d 712	316
1999	People v. Turner	719 N.E.2d 725	310
2000	People v. Malchow· Dissent†	739 N.E.2d 433	309

Showing the 15 most-cited of 323 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 Dee Heiple on?: James Dee Heiple 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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10 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).