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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1987 / Served to 1992

Joseph F. Cunningham

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Joseph F. Cunningham was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2008
Tenure: 1987–1992 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–
1991	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cunningham authored 72 published opinions for the court (1987–1992), plus 1 dissent and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Loyola Academy v. S & S Roof Maintenance, Inc. (538 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. 41 of these were attributed to Cunningham 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
1992	Loyola Academy v. S & S Roof Maintenance, Inc.†	586 N.E.2d 1211	538
1988	McGrath v. Fahey	533 N.E.2d 806	403
1988	People v. Reddick	526 N.E.2d 141	298
1988	People v. Richardson	528 N.E.2d 612	225
1992	People v. Mitchell†	604 N.E.2d 877	221
1991	People v. Adams†	581 N.E.2d 637	201
1989	People v. Galvin	535 N.E.2d 837	169
1991	People Ex Rel. Daley v. Datacom Systems Corp.†	585 N.E.2d 51	164
1992	Wojdyla v. City of Park Ridge†	592 N.E.2d 1098	161
1988	Vaughn v. Speaker	533 N.E.2d 885	160
1992	People v. Johnson†	594 N.E.2d 253	156
1992	People v. Stanciel†	606 N.E.2d 1201	137
1992	People v. Condon†	592 N.E.2d 951	107
1992	People v. Perez†	592 N.E.2d 984	98
1988	People v. Segara	533 N.E.2d 802	98

Showing the 15 most-cited of 74 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 Joseph F. Cunningham on?: Joseph F. Cunningham 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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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).