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

The court's current selection method is legislative election.

Supreme Court of Virginia / Joined 1958 / Served to 1981

Lawrence W. I'Anson

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Lawrence W. I'Anson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1907–1990
Tenure: 1958–1981 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

College of William and Mary
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, I'Anson authored 251 published opinions for the court (1958–1981), plus 4 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Slayton v. Parrigan (378 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. 257 of these were attributed to I'Anson 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
1974	Slayton v. Parrigan†	215 Va. 27	378
1974	Womack v. Eldridge†	215 Va. 338	328
1973	Hughes v. Moore†	214 Va. 27	145
1979	Ridley v. Commonwealth†	252 S.E.2d 313	139
1971	Smith v. Kauffman· Concurrence†	183 S.E.2d 190	123
1980	Turner v. Commonwealth†	273 S.E.2d 36	112
1974	Gulf Reston, Inc. v. Rogers†	215 Va. 155	88
1962	Conner v. Bragg†	203 Va. 204	86
1974	Greenfield v. Commonwealth†	214 Va. 710	83
1980	Weaver v. Roanoke Department of Human Resources†	265 S.E.2d 692	82
1978	Hatcher v. Commonwealth†	241 S.E.2d 756	80
1973	Durham v. Commonwealth†	198 S.E.2d 603	80
1970	Rakes v. Fulcher†	210 Va. 542	79
1968	Cardwell v. Commonwealth†	209 Va. 412	79
1980	Commonwealth v. Orange-Madison Cooperative Farm Service†	261 S.E.2d 532	75

Showing the 15 most-cited of 257 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 Virginia reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is legislative election.
Which court was Lawrence W. I'Anson on?: Lawrence W. I'Anson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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