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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1951 / Served to 1976

Walter V. Schaefer

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

Walter V. Schaefer was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1951. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1904–1986
Tenure: 1951–1976 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1951	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Schaefer authored 815 published opinions for the court (1951–1976), plus 120 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: The People v. Montgomery (798 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. 507 of these were attributed to Schaefer 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
1971	The People v. Montgomery†	268 N.E.2d 695	798
1965	Darling v. Charleston Community Memorial Hospital	211 N.E.2d 253	487
1964	Nelson v. Union Wire Rope Corp.· Concurrence†	199 N.E.2d 769	429
1957	Nelson v. Miller	143 N.E.2d 673	399
1967	Hux v. Raben	230 N.E.2d 831	362
1952	People Ex Rel. Wallace v. Labrenz	104 N.E.2d 769	320
1960	Dini v. Naiditch· Dissent†	170 N.E.2d 881	268
1969	Dunham v. Vaughan & Bushnell Mfg. Co.	247 N.E.2d 401	224
1968	The PEOPLE v. Hester· Dissent†	237 N.E.2d 466	222
1968	The People v. Mills· Dissent†	237 N.E.2d 697	209
1973	People v. Cole· Dissent†	298 N.E.2d 705	198
1967	Lance v. Senior	224 N.E.2d 231	195
1974	Janes v. First Federal Savings & Loan Ass'n	312 N.E.2d 605	194
1975	Mattyasovszky v. West Towns Bus Co.	330 N.E.2d 509	184
1975	People v. Viser	343 N.E.2d 903	183

Showing the 15 most-cited of 950 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 V. Schaefer on?: Walter V. Schaefer 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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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).