Justice P. Scott Neville selected as the Illinois Supreme Court's next chief justice

Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune on Sep 9, 2025

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Veteran Democratic Illinois Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville will begin a three-year term next month as the high court’s chief justice, replacing Mary Jane Theis as she completes her term as head of the court, officials with the high court said Tuesday.

Neville was chosen by his peers to begin his term as chief justice on Oct. 26 as Theis returns to being a regular justice on the panel. The two justices are among five Democrats on the high court who constitute its 5-2 Democratic majority. Theis is finishing up her three-year stint as head of the court after taking the position in 2022.

Neville was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was elected to a 10-year term in 2020. In his time on the high court, he’s heard some high-profile cases, including a challenge to the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons, which was upheld by a vote of 4-3 just months after it was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in 2023. Neville was among four Democrats who ruled in favor of the ban.

A graduate of Washington University School of Law, Neville has been practicing law in Illinois since 1974, when he became a law clerk for Justice Glenn T. Johnson of the state’s Appellate Court, according to his biography page on the Supreme Court’s website. After that, Neville specialized in appellate, employment, civil rights and complex civil litigation.

Throughout his legal career, he worked with public and private entities, including the Chicago Transit Authority, and he was once an instructor at the University of Chicago Law School in its intensive trial practice workshop.

Neville was part of a team of attorneys that successfully litigated a Chicago ward remap case — a dispute over the redrawing of the city’s 50 aldermanic wards following the 1990 decennial census — and a team that prosecuted a class action on behalf of Black and Latino workers who were laid off by the city.

He was also a president at one time of the Cook County Bar Association, and was appointed as a county judge in 1999 before being elected the following year. He later served on the state Appellate Court.

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