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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1901 / Served to 1906

James B. Ricks

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

James B. Ricks was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1901. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1852–1906
Tenure: 1901–1906 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1901	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ricks authored 242 published opinions for the court (1901–1906), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Cormack v. Marshall (73 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. 241 of these were attributed to Ricks 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
1904	Cormack v. Marshall†	211 Ill. 519	73
1903	Chicago City Railway Co. v. Carroll†	206 Ill. 318	72
1905	Ullsperger v. Meyer†	217 Ill. 262	68
1905	Eddy v. Morgan†	216 Ill. 437	53
1903	People ex rel. Faulkner v. Harris†	203 Ill. 272	52
1905	Hope v. City of Alton· Dissent†	214 Ill. 102	49
1903	Mamerow v. National Lead Co.†	206 Ill. 626	44
1905	North American Insurance v. Yates†	214 Ill. 272	42
1904	Mallin v. Wenham†	209 Ill. 252	41
1903	Ryan v. Hamilton†	205 Ill. 191	38
1904	Lloyd v. Catlin Coal Co.†	210 Ill. 460	36
1903	Supreme Tent Knights of Maccabees of the World v. Stensland†	206 Ill. 124	36
1901	Featherstone v. People†	194 Ill. 325	36
1905	Bennett v. Bennett†	217 Ill. 434	35
1903	Wakefield v. VanTassell†	202 Ill. 41	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 243 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 B. Ricks on?: James B. Ricks 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

5 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).