It was a court of last resort for the Virginia colonists except in those rare circumstances when an appeal could be made to the king in England.

Its members were appointed by the king on the basis of social standing, property, and the proximity of their estates to the colonial capital, Williamsburg.

Pendleton felt that the policy of no written opinions preserved a semblance of unity for the court and lent more credence to their decisions.

This resulted in placing the judges beyond control of the legislature once on the bench, and the court continued to function in this manner for more than half a century.

The Reform Convention of 1850–51 again reorganized the judiciary by limiting the terms of the justices to twelve years and providing for their election by popular vote.

The resulting Constitution of 1851 also required the court to state in writing its reasons for reversing or affirming a judgment or a decree.

Following the turmoil of the Civil War, the Constitution of 1870 altered the method of selecting judges and reestablished election by joint vote of both houses of the General Assembly, retaining the term of twelve years.

This mandate from the days of horse and buggy travel continued into the twentieth century, with sessions being held in Staunton as late as September 1970.

In recent years, however, the court has held panels to hear petitions for appeal outside of Richmond during the summer.

The court's original jurisdiction is limited to cases of habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, and writs of actual innocence based on DNA or other biological evidence.

The justices on each panel review the petition and the brief in opposition with the assistance of the memorandum prepared by the law clerk or staff attorney.

If the petition is granted, the second phase of the appeal leads to the case being argued on the merits to the full court.

The slips are placed in a hat, and the member of the court drawing the marked paper writes opinions in the first, eighth, and fifteenth, etc., cases on the docket.

This arrangement may be disrupted if a senior justice replaces an active member of the court who is recused from hearing a case.

The member designated to write the in a case opinion directs discussion of it by asking the justice seated at the conference table to the right for comments.

The court meets again before the next session to review and revise the circulated drafts until they receive final approval.

The clerk's office also receives, processes, and maintains permanent records of all appeals and other official documents filed with the court.

[16] Prior to 2005, the executive secretary was required to be a resident of the Commonwealth and a member of the Virginia State Bar for at least five years but these qualifications have been waived by statute.

[20] The library includes legislative and judicial materials from all 50 states, as well as the court's archives and most Virginia law schools' legal periodicals; as an official Federal Depository Library, it also receives official publications and legislative, administrative, and judicial materials from the United States government.

Assigned duties typically include assistance with legal research, editing opinion drafts, and reviewing petitions for appeal along with the court's permanent staff attorneys.

A competent staff of judges and court personnel, uniform rules and practices, and adequate funding are necessary to accomplish this function and to provide the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia with the best possible judicial system.

The Court's seal is remarkably similar to the mural Justice, Raphael and Giovanni da Udine, in the Sala di Costantino, Vatican Palace, Rome, 1519-1520.

The court presently is made up of seven justices,[26] each elected by a majority vote of both houses of the General Assembly for a term of twelve years.

[29] State law requires justices, like all Virginia jurists, to retire no later than twenty days after the commencement of the next regular session of the General Assembly following their seventy-third birthday.