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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1927 / Served to 1933

Oscar E. Heard

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Oscar E. Heard was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1927. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1856–1940
Tenure: 1927–1933 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1927	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Northwestern University

Judicial Record

In our data, Heard authored 328 published opinions for the court (1927–1933), plus 2 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Illinois Central R. R. Co. v. Oswald (123 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. 331 of these were attributed to Heard 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
1930	Illinois Central R. R. Co. v. Oswald†	170 N.E. 247	123
1928	Hoffman v. Hoffman†	161 N.E. 723	105
1931	The People v. Gould· Dissent†	178 N.E. 133	70
1930	Weger v. Robinson Nash Motor Co.†	172 N.E. 7	63
1931	Hartley v. Red Ball Transit Co.†	176 N.E. 751	61
1932	The People v. Monroe†	182 N.E. 439	55
1927	The People v. Sweetin†	156 N.E. 354	50
1932	Decatur Lumber & Manufacturing Co. v. Crail†	183 N.E. 228	49
1931	Schneider v. Autoist Mutual Insurance†	178 N.E. 466	49
1930	Illinois Bankers Life Ass'n v. Collins†	173 N.E. 465	49
1929	Sterling-Midland Coal Co. v. Great Lakes Coal & Coke Co.†	165 N.E. 793	49
1931	Green v. Ashland Sixty-Third State Bank†	178 N.E. 468	47
1930	The People v. McGurn†	173 N.E. 754	47
1929	Coal Creek Drainage & Levee District v. Sanitary District†	167 N.E. 807	47
1928	Colbert v. Holland Furnace Co.†	164 N.E. 162	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 331 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 Oscar E. Heard on?: Oscar E. Heard 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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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).