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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1951 / Served to 1956

Ralph L. Maxwell

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Ralph L. Maxwell was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1905–1956
Tenure: 1951–1956 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Maxwell authored 149 published opinions for the court (1951–1956), plus 1 dissent and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Ney v. Yellow Cab Co. (372 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 Maxwell 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
1954	Ney v. Yellow Cab Co.	117 N.E.2d 74	372
1956	The People v. Trefonas	136 N.E.2d 817	230
1952	Stalder v. Stone	107 N.E.2d 696	105
1955	People v. Hermens	125 N.E.2d 500	90
1954	Simmon v. Iowa Mutual Casualty Co.	121 N.E.2d 509	87
1953	Illinois Bell Telephone Co. v. IlliNois Commerce Commission†	111 N.E.2d 329	84
1952	People v. Gholson	106 N.E.2d 333	84
1954	People v. Loughran	118 N.E.2d 310	81
1952	Donahoo v. Board of Education	109 N.E.2d 787	81
1954	People v. Illinois Toll Highway Commission	120 N.E.2d 35	80
1952	Modern Dairy Co. v. Department of Revenue	108 N.E.2d 8	78
1956	Myers v. Krajefska	134 N.E.2d 277	76
1953	Mississippi River Fuel Corp. v. Illinois Commerce Commission†	116 N.E.2d 394	75
1955	People v. Wheeler	126 N.E.2d 228	72
1954	People v. Hryciuk†	125 N.E.2d 61	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 152 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 Ralph L. Maxwell on?: Ralph L. Maxwell 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).