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 1980 / Served to 1982

Bruce William Kauffman

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Bruce William Kauffman was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1980. He earned a law degree from Yale University in 1959. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1980–1982 · 2 yrs
Education: University of Pennsylvania 1956 · Yale

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1980	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania	B.A.	1956
Yale University	LL.B.	1959

Judicial Record

In our data, Kauffman authored 60 published opinions for the court (1980–1981), plus 18 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Miller (207 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. 85 of these were attributed to Kauffman 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
1981	Commonwealth v. Miller†	431 A.2d 233	207
1981	Jones v. Montefiore Hospital†	431 A.2d 920	175
1980	Commonwealth v. Davis†	421 A.2d 179	163
1980	Gradel v. Inouye†	421 A.2d 674	132
1981	Commonwealth v. Genovese†	425 A.2d 367	122
1981	Witmer v. Exxon Corp.†	434 A.2d 1222	107
1981	Commonwealth v. Young†	431 A.2d 230	95
1980	Scott v. Purcell†	415 A.2d 56	92
1981	Brown v. Hall†	435 A.2d 859	83
1981	Mazzie v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	432 A.2d 985	78
1981	Tubner v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance†	436 A.2d 621	77
1981	Ballou v. State Ethics Commission· Dissent†	436 A.2d 186	76
1980	Wagner v. National Indemnity Co.· Dissent†	422 A.2d 1061	74
1981	Commonwealth, Unemployment Compensation Board of Review v. Ceja†	427 A.2d 631	69
1981	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Pierce v. Pierce†	426 A.2d 555	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 85 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 Bruce William Kauffman on?: Bruce William Kauffman 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

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2 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).