How do judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 1919 / Served to 1935

Alexander Simpson Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Alexander Simpson Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1919. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1855–1935
Tenure: 1919–1935 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1919	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Simpson authored 729 published opinions for the court (1919–1935), plus 13 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Tranter v. Alleghency County Co. Authority (158 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 268 of these were attributed to Simpson by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1934	Tranter v. Alleghency County Co. Authority· Dissent	173 A. 289	158
1922	Rhodes v. Terheyden†	272 Pa. 397	132
1922	O'Malley v. O'Malley†	272 Pa. 528	111
1934	Lansdowne Borough Board of Adjustment's Appeal	170 A. 867	99
1929	Vinnacombe v. Phila. Am. S.	147 A. 828	96
1927	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Schnader v. Liveright· Dissent	161 A. 697	96
1933	Commonwealth v. Great American Indemnity Co.	167 A. 793	92
1921	Gilbraith's Estate†	270 Pa. 288	78
1921	Kiebler v. McCutcheon†	269 Pa. 365	75
1925	McCrosson v. Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co.	129 A. 568	73
1922	Callery's Appeal· Concurrence†	272 Pa. 255	69
1932	Urian v. Scranton Life Ins. Co.	165 A. 21	68
1926	Smith v. Yellow Cab Co.	135 A. 858	67
1926	March v. Philadelphia & West Chester Traction Co.	132 A. 355	67
1920	McConville v. Ingham†	268 Pa. 507	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 750 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Alexander Simpson Jr. on?: Alexander Simpson Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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16 years on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).