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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1969 / Served to 1970

John T. Culbertson Jr.

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

John T. Culbertson Jr. was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1891–1982
Tenure: 1969–1970 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Culbertson authored 47 published opinions for the court (1969–1970). Most cited: The People v. Hairston (411 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. 37 of these were attributed to Culbertson 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	The People v. Hairston†	263 N.E.2d 840	411
1970	Cunningham v. MacNeal Memorial Hospital†	266 N.E.2d 897	146
1970	Deckard v. Joiner	255 N.E.2d 900	142
1969	The People v. Sailor†	253 N.E.2d 397	141
1970	Moore v. Jewel Tea Co.	263 N.E.2d 103	120
1970	The PEOPLE v. Grieco†	255 N.E.2d 897	76
1970	The PEOPLE v. Derengowski†	256 N.E.2d 455	64
1970	Gibraltar Insurance v. Varkalis	263 N.E.2d 823	59
1970	The People v. Dennis†	265 N.E.2d 385	54
1970	Board of Education of Kankakee School District No. III v. Kankakee Federation of Teachers Local No. 886	264 N.E.2d 18	50
1970	Sherman-Reynolds, Inc. v. Mahin†	265 N.E.2d 640	49
1970	The PEOPLE v. Zepeda†	265 N.E.2d 647	47
1970	The People v. Hammond†	259 N.E.2d 44	45
1970	The People v. Hicks†	256 N.E.2d 823	40
1970	People v. Presley†	264 N.E.2d 177	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 47 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 John T. Culbertson Jr. on?: John T. Culbertson Jr. was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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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).