Our legal and electoral systems are complex—even the most informed among us may not know all the details. In response to readers’ election questions, The St. Louis American is launching the “Unlock the Ballot” initiative to demystify down-ballot propositions and races for judges and school board seats. Now more than ever, St. Louisans need to be informed about lesser-known candidates and issues that may not make headlines but deeply affect our lives and communities.
Illinois Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. will become the court’s 123rd chief justice and only the second Black jurist to hold the post. His peers selected him to succeed Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis, who will continue as an associate justice when he assumes the top leadership position on Oct. 26.
As chief justice, Neville will oversee the administration of Illinois’ courts — more than 900 judges statewide — while supervising committee appointments, guiding the Illinois Judicial Conference and presenting the court’s annual budget to the General Assembly. But colleagues and observers say Neville brings more than administrative skill; he brings a jurisprudence shaped by a lifelong commitment to civil rights, fairness and constitutional protections.
“Justice Neville has demonstrated a deep commitment to justice and fairness throughout his distinguished career,” Theis said. “I am confident that he will continue to uphold the integrity of the Illinois Supreme Court as its next Chief Justice.
Born in Chicago to attorney P. Scott Neville Sr. and Alice Dempsey Neville, he grew up surrounded by examples of hard work and advocacy, according to his Illinois Supreme Court biography. His grandmother instilled discipline, his father pressed him to become an orator and his mother urged him to be a strong writer.
Neville earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri, and received his law degree from Washington University School of Law.
A consistent equal justice advocate, Neville, launched his legal career in 1974 as the first Black law clerk to an Illinois First District Appellate Court judge, Glenn T. Johnson. He later built his own firm and argued major civil rights cases — including a challenge of Chicago ward remap in the 1990s as a member of a legal team that included future U.S. President Barack Obama.
Neville was elected to the Cook County Circuit Court in 2000, appointed to the Illinois Appellate Court in 2004, appointed to the Illinois Supreme Court in 2018 to fill the vacancy left by Justice Charles E. Freeman, the first Black justice to serve on the court and its chief justice from 1997 to 1999. Neville was elected to a 10-year term in 2020.
Throughout his career, Neville has not shied away from challenging precedent when he believed constitutional rights were at stake. His judicial philosophy is marked by vigilance in protecting defendants and ensuring fairness across the system.
In 2019, he authored the opinion striking down a 50-year sentence for a 16-year-old as a de facto life term that violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. “This is the most significant decision I have written in my 20 years of judicial service,” Neville said in a 2020 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, noting its impact on an estimated 128 juvenile cases statewide.
Also in 2019, he overturned a gun conviction, questioning how the court relied on testimony from a gang expert. In a separate case a year earlier, he argued it was “manifestly unfair” to put all the responsibility on defendants to clear wrongful convictions from their records. “The State should be required to undertake that responsibility,” he wrote, urging prosecutors and courts to take the lead in erasing convictions based on unconstitutional laws.
His voice has often been strongest in dissent. In 2019, he warned that a defendant’s right to a fair trial had been compromised by a trial judge’s off-the-record comments to a jury. Years earlier, as an appellate justice, Neville was the lone dissenter who found Illinois’ ban on carrying firearms unconstitutional — a position the Illinois Supreme Court later adopted.
“I have been on the battlefield my entire life fighting to improve the lives of all people,” Neville told the Sun-Times in 2020.
Neville has also emphasized access to justice outside the courtroom. He cofounded the Alliance of Bar Associations to evaluate judicial candidates, served as president of the Cook County Bar Association, and has long supported scholarships for law students from underrepresented backgrounds.
Upon his election to chief justice, Neville pledged to strengthen public trust.
“I will always work to make the Illinois courts a national model, safeguarding the constitutional promise of equal justice without regard to who a person is, where they live, or what resources they have so all litigants are seen and heard,” he said.