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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Illinois Supreme Court / Joined 1976 / Served to 1992

William G. Clark

Justice, Illinois Supreme Court

William G. Clark was a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1924–2001
Tenure: 1976–1992 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Illinois Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Clark authored 1,020 published opinions for the court (1956–1992), plus 88 dissents and 51 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Collins (2,507 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. 181 of these were attributed to Clark 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
1985	People v. Collins· Dissent†	478 N.E.2d 267	2,507
1984	People v. Albanese· Concurrence†	473 N.E.2d 1246	1,967
1984	People v. Krankel	464 N.E.2d 1045	987
1980	People v. Carlson· Dissent†	404 N.E.2d 233	666
1989	HPI Health Care Services, Inc. v. Mt. Vernon Hospital, Inc.	545 N.E.2d 672	661
1983	People v. Free· Concurrence†	447 N.E.2d 218	459
1988	Greer v. Illinois Housing Development Authority	524 N.E.2d 561	454
1984	People v. Tisler· Concurrence†	469 N.E.2d 147	446
1977	People v. Manion	367 N.E.2d 1313	432
1965	The People v. Taylor	211 N.E.2d 673	429
1990	People v. Henderson· Dissent†	568 N.E.2d 1234	387
1988	People v. Wilk· Concurrence†	529 N.E.2d 218	359
1980	People v. Lindgren	402 N.E.2d 238	352
1981	People v. Lewis· Concurrence†	430 N.E.2d 1346	340
1990	People v. Bean· Dissent†	560 N.E.2d 258	332

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,159 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 William G. Clark on?: William G. Clark 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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16 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).