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 1942 / Served to 1956

Allen M. Stearne

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Allen M. Stearne was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1942. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1882–1956
Tenure: 1942–1956 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1942	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Stearne authored 398 published opinions for the court (1943–1956), plus 18 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Leahey v. Farrell (129 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. 157 of these were attributed to Stearne 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
1949	Leahey v. Farrell	66 A.2d 577	129
1953	Commonwealth v. Emerick†	373 Pa. 388	120
1949	McConnell v. Williams· Dissent	65 A.2d 243	101
1953	National Biscuit Co. v. Philadelphia· Concurrence†	374 Pa. 604	83
1951	Byers v. Ward†	368 Pa. 416	83
1952	Hill School Tax Exemption Case†	370 Pa. 21	82
1946	Schwab Adoption Case	50 A.2d 504	82
1949	Crawford Estate	67 A.2d 124	81
1952	Miller v. Pennsylvania Railroad†	371 Pa. 308	71
1951	Dahlstrom v. Shrum†	368 Pa. 423	71
1944	Hughes v. Babcock	37 A.2d 551	71
1944	Burtt Will	44 A.2d 670	69
1948	Maxwell v. Saylor· Dissent	58 A.2d 355	66
1952	Pittsburgh v. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission· Dissent†	370 Pa. 305	65
1945	Gallagher Estate	43 A.2d 132	63

Showing the 15 most-cited of 421 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 Allen M. Stearne on?: Allen M. Stearne was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

13 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).