Cynthia Cobbs
2011 - Present
2024
12
2012 - Present
2026
12
Cynthia Cobbs is a judge of the Illinois 1st District Appellate Court. She assumed office on September 22, 2011. Her current term ends on December 2, 2024.
Cobbs is also a judge of the Cook County Circuit Court in Illinois. She assumed office in 2012. Her current term ends on December 7, 2026.
Cobbs (Democratic Party) is running for re-election for judge of the Illinois 1st District Appellate Court. She is on the ballot in the general election on November 5, 2024. She advanced from the Democratic primary on March 19, 2024.
Cobbs is a judge assigned to the First District Appellate Court in Illinois. Though she works as an appellate judge, Cobbs still faces retention elections to her position on the Cook Judicial Circuit Court. She was first appointed to the Cook Judicial Circuit Court on September 22, 2011, to replace Henry Simmons and was then re-appointed, effective November 30, 2012, to replace Barbara McDonald.[1][2][3] Cobbs was re-elected to the Cook County Judicial Circuit in 2014 for a term that expired on December 6, 2020.[4][5]
On January 5, 2015, Cobbs was assigned to the First District Appellate Court, effective January 7, 2015.[6]
Biography
Cobbs received her undergraduate degree from Morgan State University in 1972 and her master's in social work from the University of Maryland. After working for several years as a social worker in Maryland clinics, Cobbs went on to received her J.D. degree from the IIT—Chicago Kent College of Law in 1988.[2][7]
Cobbs previously held the post of director of the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts. She worked in this position from March 1, 2002, until joining the Cook Judicial Circuit Court in 2011. She was both the first woman and the first African American to serve as director of the Administrative Office.[2]
Awards and associations
- 2011: Earl Burris Dickerson Award, the Chicago Bar Association [2]
Elections
2024
See also: Illinois intermediate appellate court elections, 2024
General election
The candidate list in this election may not be complete.
General election for Illinois 1st District Appellate Court
Incumbent Cynthia Cobbs is running in the general election for Illinois 1st District Appellate Court on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | ||
 | Cynthia Cobbs (D) | |
| ||||
 = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Illinois 1st District Appellate Court
Incumbent Cynthia Cobbs defeated Carolyn Gallagher in the Democratic primary for Illinois 1st District Appellate Court on March 19, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Cynthia Cobbs | 70.6 | 335,240 |
 | Carolyn Gallagher | 29.4 | 139,774 | |
| Total votes: 475,014 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign finance
Endorsements
Ballotpedia is gathering information about candidate endorsements. To send us an endorsement, click here.
2020
Cook County Circuit Court
Cook County Circuit Court, Retention election for Cynthia Cobbs
Cynthia Cobbs was retained to the Cook County Circuit Court on November 3, 2020 with 80.1% of the vote.
Retention Vote |
% |
Votes |
|||
| ✔ | Yes |
80.1
|
1,318,514 | ||
No |
19.9
|
327,611 | |||
Total Votes |
1,646,125 | ||||
|
|
Illinois Supreme Court 1st District
See also: Illinois Supreme Court elections, 2020
General election
General election for Illinois Supreme Court 1st District
Incumbent P. Scott Neville defeated Richard Mayers in the general election for Illinois Supreme Court 1st District on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | P. Scott Neville (D) | 100.0 | 1,765,329 |
 | Richard Mayers (Independent) (Write-in) | 0.0 | 31 | |
| Total votes: 1,765,360 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Illinois Supreme Court 1st District
The following candidates ran in the Democratic primary for Illinois Supreme Court 1st District on March 17, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | P. Scott Neville | 26.2 | 214,066 |
 | Jesse G. Reyes | 20.3 | 165,344 | |
 | Sheldon Harris | 15.1 | 123,166 | |
| Cynthia Cobbs | 12.7 | 103,497 | |
 | Margaret Stanton McBride | 12.4 | 101,475 | |
 | Daniel Epstein | 8.2 | 66,762 | |
 | Nathaniel R. Howse | 5.1 | 41,205 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.0 | 22 | ||
| Total votes: 815,537 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Clint Krislov (D)
2014
- See also: Illinois judicial elections, 2014
Cobbs ran for election to the Cook Judicial Circuit Court.
Primary: She was successful in the Democratic primary on March 18, 2014, receiving 72.3 percent of the vote. She competed against Linda L. Mastandrea.
General: She was unopposed in the general election on November 4, 2014.[4][8][9]
Evaluations
The Illinois State Bar Association rated Cynthia Cobbs as Qualified for election in 2014.[10]
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Cynthia Cobbs has not yet completed Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey. Send a message to Cynthia Cobbs asking her to fill out the survey. If you are Cynthia Cobbs, click here to fill out Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
Who fills out Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey?
Any candidate running for elected office, at any level, can complete Ballotpedia's Candidate Survey. Completing the survey will update the candidate's Ballotpedia profile, letting voters know who they are and what they stand for. More than 18,000 candidates have taken Ballotpedia's candidate survey since we launched it in 2015. Learn more about the survey here.
You can ask Cynthia Cobbs to fill out this survey by using the button below or emailing [email protected].
2020
Cynthia Cobbs did not complete Ballotpedia's 2020 Candidate Connection survey.
2019
Cynthia Cobbs completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Cobbs' responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
| Collapse all
Visit www.justicecobbs.org
- Every person who seeks or needs to use the courts should have access, regardless of their ability to pay for legal representation.
- Every justice partner (judge, clerks of court, guardian ad litem, probation officer, court administrators) should make certain that citizens using the courts are treated fairly and without bias.
- Cases presented in our courts, regardless of whether they are in the trial, appellate or supreme court, should be disposed of efficiently and without unnecessary delay.
Criminal Justice Reform
I have great judicial temperament; I am a good listener; I have legal competence and am compassionate and I engage easily with people of all walks of life.
Ability to understand the needs of and to oversee and mange the Illinois Court system to ensure access and procedural fairness to all court users.
The ability to resolve cases accepted on appeal by the Court, which requires strong legal research, analytical and writing ability.
Prior to becoming a lawyer, I worked as a clinical social worker, helping to restore families and protecting children who had allegedly been abused physically, sexually or neglected.
Bob Marley - Don't Worry
The Supreme Court is the highest reviewing court in the state. The Court hears only a small percentage of cases which it approves to hear on appeal. The majority of cases that are appealed are decided by the Appellate Court. For that reason, it is often said that the Appellate Court is the court of last resort.
A major facet of the work of the Illinois Supreme Court is oversight of the entire court system. The constitution requires that the Supreme Court oversee and manage (administer) all of the courts and the legal system in the state of Illinois.
The constitution also requires that the Supreme Court appoint a Director of the Courts to assist in overseeing and managing the Illinois courts.
The Supreme Court, with the assistance of the Director of the Courts, creates programs, policies and rules which govern every aspect of court administration, including, but not limited to, continuing education for judges, setting standards for probation officers, developing and amending the rules of practice for court proceedings, contracting for goods and services for judicial branch courts and offices, reviewing legislation effecting the court system, approving and overseeing alternative dispute resolution programs and setting the standards for e-filing and e-access to records in the trial courts.
The Supreme Court performs its administrative work in overseeing the statewide court system with the assistance of the Director of the Illinois Courts.
Judges are mandated to follow the law. My philosophy is that every judge should properly construe the law and to fairly apply that law to a set of facts.
Justice Charles E. Freeman, for whom I served as a judicial law clerk to in the Illinois Appellate Court and then as his Senior Judicial Law Clerk in the Illinois Supreme Court for more than 7 years. Later, I continued to work with Justice Freeman in my capacity as Director of the Illinois Courts on initiatives which he sought to have explored for possible adoption by the Court.
Every judge comes to the bench with his or her own personal and life's experiences. Empathy is an important quality, along with compassion and good temperament. Even so, a judge must put aside his or her own personal feelings to render the most fair and objective decision for all parties involved in litigation. Being empathetic sensitizes a judge to particular circumstances which might aid in the decision making over those matters which permit discretion.
Yes, by the Chicago Bar Association and the Alliance of Bar Associations. Bar ratings have included the following: Highly Qualified, Qualified, Highly Recommended, and Recommended.
My concern is that there is a growing lack of confidence in our legal system, inclusive of the courts.
Our Supreme Court is the head of the third branch of government. It is the Court's role to construe the constitution and statutes and to apply those provisions to the facts of cases presented.
Annually, on behalf of the Court, the Director of the Illinois Courts produces a Report to the Legislature, outlining the work of the Courts and, as appropriate, suggesting to the legislature that it consider certain statutes, challenged on appeal, held to be unconstitutional.
I believe that Bar Association ratings offer a component, not the whole of the judges ability. An accurate evaluation depends on the experience and work of the judge as it relates to the work of the particular court for which the judge is being considered.
Because the work of the Supreme Court, which is not like the work of either the trial or the appellate court, yes.
The Supreme Court is the only court which oversees the work of the entire court system in Illinois. That work requires work with the Legislative and Executive Branches of government to understand how legislation potentially affecting the courts is created and may be amended; to ensure that resources are appropriated to support judicial branch needs, as well as judicial and judicial employees' salaries, adherence to courthouse standards, funding for the delivery of probation services throughout the state, technology in the courts and operation of the court system generally.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
|
Candidate Illinois 1st District Appellate Court |
Officeholder Illinois 1st District Appellate Court |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Illinois Supreme Court, "In re: Judicial Vacancy," November 12, 2012
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 The State of Illinois "Illinois Supreme Court Names Administrative Director Cynthia Y. Cobbs to Cook County Circuit Court," September 22, 2011 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "pressrelease" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Chicago Tribune, "Cook judge appointed by state high court lives in Will County, in violation of law," October 25, 2011
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Illinois State Board of Elections, "Candidate List- General Primary," March 18, 2014
- ↑ Illinois State Board of Elections, "Official Canvass, General Primary Election," March 18, 2014
- ↑ Illinois State Bar Association, "Cobbs, Palmer assigned to 1st District Appellate Court," January 5, 2015
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on December 15, 2019
- ↑ Board of Election Commissioners for the City of Chicago, "General Primary Election, Unofficial Summary Report," March 18, 2014, archived March 21, 2014
- ↑ Cook County Clerk, "Gubernatorial Primary Election," March 18, 2014, archived March 21, 2014
- ↑ Illinois State Bar Association, "Judicial Evaluations," October 2014
| ||||||||||
 |
State of Illinois Springfield (capital) |
|---|---|
| Elections |
What's on my ballot? | Elections in 2024 | How to vote | How to run for office | Ballot measures |
| Government |
Who represents me? | U.S. President | U.S. Congress | Federal courts | State executives | State legislature | State and local courts | Counties | Cities | School districts | Public policy |
