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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1938 / Served to 1951

Walter T. Gunn

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Walter T. Gunn was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1938. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1879–1956
Tenure: 1938–1951 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1938	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Gunn authored 488 published opinions for the court (1938–1951), plus 16 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. v. Slattery (103 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. 39 of these were attributed to Gunn 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
1939	Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. v. Slattery	25 N.E.2d 482	103
1949	Wilson v. Tromly	89 N.E.2d 22	93
1943	Owens-Illinois Glass Co. v. McKibbin	52 N.E.2d 177	86
1941	City of Geneseo v. Illinois Northern Utilities Co.	39 N.E.2d 26	82
1948	The People v. Wilson	81 N.E.2d 211	76
1939	Meadowmoor Dairies, Inc. v. Milk Wagon Drivers' Union of Chicago No. 753	21 N.E.2d 308	75
1946	Winger v. Chicago City Bank & Trust Co.	67 N.E.2d 265	73
1948	The People v. Willson	81 N.E.2d 485	65
1947	The People v. Weisberg	71 N.E.2d 671	65
1943	Jilek v. Chicago, Wilmington & Franklin Coal Co.	47 N.E.2d 96	61
1944	Krebs v. Thompson· Concurrence	56 N.E.2d 761	60
1940	Groome v. Freyn Engineering Co.	28 N.E.2d 274	57
1945	People Ex Rel. Waite v. Bristow· Dissent	62 N.E.2d 545	54
1948	The People v. Thomlison	81 N.E.2d 434	52
1945	In Re Estate of Tilliski	61 N.E.2d 24	51

Showing the 15 most-cited of 522 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 Walter T. Gunn on?: Walter T. Gunn was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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13 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).