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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1999 / Served to 2000

S Louis Rathje

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

S Louis Rathje was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1999. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 1999–2000 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1999	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Wheaton College
Northwestern University

Judicial Record

In our data, Rathje authored 34 published opinions for the court (1960–2000), plus 10 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Fern (486 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. 29 of these were attributed to Rathje 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
1999	People v. Fern· Dissent†	723 N.E.2d 207	486
2000	People v. Patterson	735 N.E.2d 616	329
2000	People v. Malchow	739 N.E.2d 433	309
2000	In re G.O.†	191 Ill. 2d 37	289
1999	Henrich v. Libertyville High School· Dissent†	712 N.E.2d 298	280
1999	People v. Brooks	718 N.E.2d 88	253
2000	People v. Sims· Concurrence†	736 N.E.2d 1048	249
1999	First Springfield Bank & Trust v. Galman	720 N.E.2d 1068	240
2000	People v. Mitchell	727 N.E.2d 254	234
2000	Lulay v. Lulay· Concurrence†	739 N.E.2d 521	187
2000	People v. Haynes· Concurrence†	737 N.E.2d 169	185
1960	Brockmeyer v. Duncan	165 N.E.2d 294	185
2000	People v. Nieves	739 N.E.2d 1277	184
2000	Jones v. Chicago HMO Ltd. of Illinois· Concurrence†	730 N.E.2d 1119	181
2000	Morris B. Chapman & Associates, Ltd. v. Kitzman· Dissent†	739 N.E.2d 1263	168

Showing the 15 most-cited of 58 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 S Louis Rathje on?: S Louis Rathje 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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1 year 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).