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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1988 / Served to 1990

John James Stamos

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

John James Stamos was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1988. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1924 · age 102
Tenure: 1988–1990 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1988	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

DePaul University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stamos authored 67 published opinions for the court (1967–1990), plus 3 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Henderson (387 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. 10 of these were attributed to Stamos 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
1990	People v. Henderson	568 N.E.2d 1234	387
1989	Pyne v. Witmer	543 N.E.2d 1304	366
1990	People v. Bean	560 N.E.2d 258	332
1989	People v. Eyler	549 N.E.2d 268	320
1990	Quake Construction, Inc. v. American Airlines, Inc.· Concurrence†	565 N.E.2d 990	307
1989	Zaderaka v. Illinois Human Rights Commission	545 N.E.2d 684	294
1990	Rollins v. Ellwood	565 N.E.2d 1302	261
1990	In Re Adoption of Syck	562 N.E.2d 174	259
1990	People v. Gersch	553 N.E.2d 281	244
1989	Castaneda v. Illinois Human Rights Commission	547 N.E.2d 437	226
1990	Burdinie v. Village of Glendale Heights†	139 Ill. 2d 501	214
1989	People v. Chandler	543 N.E.2d 1290	178
1990	Barth v. Reagan	564 N.E.2d 1196	155
1990	Williams v. Illinois State Scholarship Commission	563 N.E.2d 465	150
1988	People v. O'NEAL	531 N.E.2d 366	146

Showing the 15 most-cited of 73 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 James Stamos on?: John James Stamos 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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2 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).