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 1989 / Served to 2011

Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, who joined the court in 1989. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1955–2011
Tenure: 1989–2011 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1989	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hassell authored 298 published opinions for the court (1990–2010), plus 11 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Russo v. White (284 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. 68 of these were attributed to Hassell 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
1991	Russo v. White· Dissent†	400 S.E.2d 160	284
1990	Barr v. Town & Country Properties, Inc.	396 S.E.2d 672	238
1991	Derr v. Commonwealth	410 S.E.2d 662	214
2000	Dowden v. Commonwealth	536 S.E.2d 437	206
1996	Mortarino v. Consultant Engineering Services, Inc.	467 S.E.2d 778	165
2000	Delk v. Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.	523 S.E.2d 826	141
2007	Haugen v. SHENANDOAH VALLEY SOCIAL SERVICES	645 S.E.2d 261	140
1999	Prospect Development Co. v. Bershader	515 S.E.2d 291	138
1994	Lockhart v. Commonwealth Education Systems Corp.	439 S.E.2d 328	125
1994	Buck v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	443 S.E.2d 414	118
1991	Cox Cable Hampton Roads, Inc. v. City of Norfolk	410 S.E.2d 652	116
1996	Husske v. Commonwealth	476 S.E.2d 920	110
1998	Commonwealth v. Presley	507 S.E.2d 72	106
2001	Lenz v. Commonwealth	544 S.E.2d 299	98
1995	D.C. McClain, Inc. v. Arlington County	452 S.E.2d 659	97

Showing the 15 most-cited of 321 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 Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. on?: Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. 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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21 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).