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 2007 / Active

S. Bernard Goodwyn

Senior Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia

S. Bernard Goodwyn is a Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, serving since 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1961 · age 65
Tenure: Since 2007 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Supreme Court of Virginia	–	–

Education

Harvard University
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Goodwyn authored 84 published opinions for the court (2008–2019), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Bolden v. Com. (376 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. 38 of these were attributed to Goodwyn 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
2008	Bolden v. Com.	654 S.E.2d 584	376
2017	Commonwealth v. Moseley· Dissent†	799 S.E.2d 683	241
2008	McCain v. Com.	659 S.E.2d 512	132
2008	Harris v. Com.	668 S.E.2d 141	98
2016	Elliott v. Carter†	791 S.E.2d 730	86
2011	Condominium Services, Inc. v. FOA	709 S.E.2d 163	73
2017	Cole v. Commonwealth†	806 S.E.2d 387	61
2010	Brown v. Com.	688 S.E.2d 185	60
2008	McMorris v. Com.	666 S.E.2d 348	54
2008	Com. v. Robertson	659 S.E.2d 321	54
2010	Carter v. Com.	694 S.E.2d 590	51
2008	Palmer & Palmer v. Waterfront Marine	662 S.E.2d 77	50
2009	Matthews v. Matthews	675 S.E.2d 157	47
2012	PBM NUTRITIONALS, LLC v. Lexington Ins. Co.	724 S.E.2d 707	39
2011	Simms v. Ruby Tuesday, Inc.	704 S.E.2d 359	39

Showing the 15 most-cited of 85 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 is S. Bernard Goodwyn on?: S. Bernard Goodwyn is a Senior 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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18 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).