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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 2008 / Active

Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter is a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Leadbetter authored 292 published opinions for the court (1998–2025), plus 18 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Casne v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board (108 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. 175 of these were attributed to Leadbetter 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
2008	Casne v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board†	962 A.2d 14	108
2010	Russo v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review†	13 A.3d 1000	66
2012	Delaware County v. Schaefer Ex Rel. Philadelphia Inquirer	45 A.3d 1149	63
2016	J. Taylor v. The PSP of the Commonwealth of PA· Concurrence†	132 A.3d 590	59
2015	Tidd v. Lower Saucon Township Zoning Hearing Board· Dissent†	118 A.3d 1	50
2010	East Stroudsburg University Foundation v. Office of Open Records· Concurrence†	995 A.2d 496	45
2010	Finn v. Rendell	990 A.2d 100	44
2010	Philadelphia Parking Authority v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review· Concurrence†	1 A.3d 965	43
2009	Harris v. Rendell	982 A.2d 1030	43
2008	Wilson v. Commonwealth Board of Probation & Parole†	942 A.2d 270	40
2013	City of Philadelphia v. Manu†	76 A.3d 601	39
2011	City of Bradford v. Teamsters Local Union No. 110†	25 A.3d 408	39
2001	Poffenberger v. Goldstein	776 A.2d 1037	34
2012	Housing Authority of Pittsburgh v. Van Osdol†	40 A.3d 209	33
2011	Joseph v. North Whitehall Township Board of Supervisors†	16 A.3d 1209	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 324 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 Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter on?: Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter is a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

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

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