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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1953 / Served to 1969

Ray Klingbiel

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Ray Klingbiel was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1901–1973
Tenure: 1953–1969 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Klingbiel authored 449 published opinions for the court (1953–1969), plus 10 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Gray v. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp. (596 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. 190 of these were attributed to Klingbiel 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
1961	Gray v. American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp.	176 N.E.2d 761	596
1959	Molitor v. Kaneland Community Unit District No. 302	163 N.E.2d 89	560
1964	Nelson v. Union Wire Rope Corp.†	199 N.E.2d 769	429
1955	Kahn v. James Burton Co.	126 N.E.2d 836	363
1960	Dini v. Naiditch· Dissent†	170 N.E.2d 881	268
1968	The People v. Williams	240 N.E.2d 645	151
1956	The PEOPLE v. Halteman	139 N.E.2d 286	149
1966	Droste v. Kerner	217 N.E.2d 73	142
1968	Maki v. Frelk†	239 N.E.2d 445	138
1959	Brown v. Zimmerman	163 N.E.2d 518	118
1963	The People v. Beier	194 N.E.2d 280	109
1961	Cities Service Oil Co. v. City of Des Plaines	171 N.E.2d 605	109
1959	Giacopelli v. Florence Crittenton Home· Concurrence†	158 N.E.2d 613	108
1955	Geraghty v. Burr Oak Lanes, Inc.	125 N.E.2d 47	105
1955	Cerny-Pickas & Co. v. C. R. Jahn Co.· Dissent†	131 N.E.2d 100	100

Showing the 15 most-cited of 462 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 Ray Klingbiel on?: Ray Klingbiel 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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16 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).