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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1992 / Served to 1998

John L. Nickels

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

John L. Nickels was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1992. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1931–2013
Tenure: 1992–1998 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1992	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

DePaul University

Judicial Record

In our data, Nickels authored 105 published opinions for the court (1993–1998), plus 23 dissents and 6 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Gaultney (583 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. 39 of these were attributed to Nickels 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	People v. Gaultney	675 N.E.2d 102	583
1995	People v. Keene· Concurrence†	660 N.E.2d 901	416
1995	People v. Arna· Dissent†	658 N.E.2d 445	405
1997	People v. Reed	686 N.E.2d 584	354
1994	People v. Novak· Dissent†	643 N.E.2d 762	347
1996	Advincula v. United Blood Services· Concurrence†	678 N.E.2d 1009	324
1994	Doe v. Calumet City	641 N.E.2d 498	322
1996	Cramer v. Insurance Exchange Agency	675 N.E.2d 897	298
1995	People v. Coleman	660 N.E.2d 919	297
1994	Martin v. Heinold Commodities, Inc.	643 N.E.2d 734	264
1997	People v. Pecoraro	677 N.E.2d 875	258
1995	Hermitage Corp. v. Contractors Adjustment Co.	651 N.E.2d 1132	257
1996	People v. Williams· Dissent†	670 N.E.2d 638	252
1994	Ziarko v. Soo Line Railroad· Dissent†	641 N.E.2d 402	240
1993	People v. Cloutier	622 N.E.2d 774	232

Showing the 15 most-cited of 134 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 L. Nickels on?: John L. Nickels 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.

6 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).