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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 2001 / Former Justice

Rita B. Garman

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Rita B. Garman was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2001 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Garman authored 175 published opinions for the court (2001–2017), plus 20 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Hodges (1,202 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. 62 of these were attributed to Garman 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
2009	People v. Hodges· Concurrence†	912 N.E.2d 1204	1,202
2007	People v. Wheeler	871 N.E.2d 728	902
2001	People v. Edwards· Dissent†	757 N.E.2d 442	888
2004	People v. Cunningham	818 N.E.2d 304	801
2002	People v. Pitsonbarger	793 N.E.2d 609	692
2004	People v. Brenda T.· Dissent†	212 Ill. 2d 347	659
2003	People v. Donoho	788 N.E.2d 707	617
2006	Marshall v. Burger King Corp.	856 N.E.2d 1048	606
2007	People v. Perry	864 N.E.2d 196	553
2004	Adams v. Northern Illinois Gas Co.· Dissent†	809 N.E.2d 1248	527
2007	Gallagher v. Lenart	874 N.E.2d 43	481
2007	People v. Suarez	862 N.E.2d 977	389
2004	People v. Arthur H.· Dissent†	819 N.E.2d 734	371
2003	Van Meter v. Darien Park District· Dissent†	207 Ill. 2d 359	359
2009	People v. Alfred H.H.†	233 Ill. 2d 345	344

Showing the 15 most-cited of 210 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 Rita B. Garman on?: Rita B. Garman 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

25 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).