We have legal forms available for use in the Illinois legal system, which is very complex. We have some basic information about the Illinois legal system available here.
While the organization of the central government of Illinois is largely the same as every other state (having three branches of government: executive, legislative and judicial), below this top level, the substructure of Illinois’ government is extremely complex, arguably the most complex of all fifty states.
Legislative functions are granted to the Illinois General Assembly, composed of the 118-member Illinois House of Representatives and the 59-member Illinois Senate. The executive branch is led by the Governor of Illinois, but four other executive officials are separately elected by the people. The judiciary is composed of the Supreme Court of Illinois and the lower appellate and circuit courts.
Illinois is the 25th most extensive and the 5th most populous of the 50 United States, and is often noted as a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad economic base. Illinois is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the state to other global ports from the Great Lakes, via the St. Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean; as well as the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River. For decades, O’Hare International Airport has ranked as one of the world’s busiest airports. As the “most average state”, Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and politics.
In the 1810s, settlers began arriving from Kentucky. In 1818 Illinois achieved statehood. The state’s population originally grew from south to north. Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River, one of the few natural harbors on southern Lake Michigan. Railroads and John Deere’s invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois’ rich prairie into some of the world’s most productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars. The Great Migration established a large community of African Americans in Chicago that created the city’s famous jazz and blues cultures.