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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Georgia / Joined 2019 / Active

John J. Ellington

Justice, Supreme Court of Georgia

John J. Ellington is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia, serving since 2019. He previously served on the Court of Appeals of Georgia. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1960 · age 66
Tenure: Since 2019 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1999	Court of Appeals of Georgia	–	–
2019	Supreme Court of Georgia	–	–

Education

University of Georgia
University of Georgia

Judicial Record

In our data, Ellington authored 1,192 published opinions for the court (1999–2019), plus 7 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Bell v. Cohran (350 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. 493 of these were attributed to Ellington 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
2000	Bell v. Cohran	536 S.E.2d 187	350
2010	Frazier v. State	691 S.E.2d 247	293
2007	Hook v. Bergen†	286 Ga. App. 258	199
2009	Board of Regents v. Canas	672 S.E.2d 471	83
2000	Dixon v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority	529 S.E.2d 398	70
2001	In the Interest of S. H.†	251 Ga. App. 555	64
2015	Davis v. the State†	330 Ga. App. 711	59
2007	In the Interest of R. C. M.	645 S.E.2d 363	55
2018	SOBERANIS v. the STATE.†	812 S.E.2d 800	52
2007	Rocha v. State	651 S.E.2d 781	52
2002	Time Warner Entertainment Co. v. Six Flags Over Georgia, LLC	563 S.E.2d 178	51
2012	Georgia Department of Community Health v. Data Inquiry, LLC	722 S.E.2d 403	47
2000	Hooters of Augusta, Inc. v. Nicholson	537 S.E.2d 468	47
2000	ReMax North Atlanta v. Clark	537 S.E.2d 138	47
2006	Insight Technology, Inc. v. FREIGHTCHECK, LLC	633 S.E.2d 373	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,206 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 Supreme Court of Georgia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court is John J. Ellington on?: John J. Ellington is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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7 years on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).