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 1945 / Served to 1966

Charles Alvin Jones

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Charles Alvin Jones was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1945. He earned a law degree from The Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1887–1966
Tenure: 1945–1966 · 21 yrs
Education: The Dickinson Law of the Pennsylvania State

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1945	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

The Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University	LL.B.
Williams College

Judicial Record

In our data, Jones authored 261 published opinions for the court (1945–1956), plus 36 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: Matson v. Margiotti (171 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. 312 of these were attributed to Jones 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
1952	Matson v. Margiotti· Dissent†	371 Pa. 188	171
1955	Gardner v. Allegheny County· Concurrence†	382 Pa. 88	150
1955	Commonwealth v. Bolish· Concurrence†	381 Pa. 500	148
1952	Lanni v. Pennsylvania Railroad· Dissent†	371 Pa. 106	126
1954	Sullivan v. Philadelphia†	378 Pa. 648	102
1955	Karcesky v. Laria· Concurrence†	382 Pa. 227	100
1956	Socha v. Metz†	385 Pa. 632	86
1950	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Spencer v. Ashe†	364 Pa. 442	82
1956	Addison Case†	385 Pa. 48	81
1951	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Holly v. Ashe†	368 Pa. 211	78
1954	Barium Steel Corp. v. Wiley· Dissent†	379 Pa. 38	75
1955	International Milling Co. v. Hachmeister, Inc.†	380 Pa. 407	69
1953	Baker v. Retirement Bd. of Allegheny Co.· Concurrence†	374 Pa. 165	67
1956	Eways v. Reading Parking Authority· Dissent†	385 Pa. 592	66
1955	Powell v. Shepard†	381 Pa. 405	66

Showing the 15 most-cited of 312 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 Charles Alvin Jones on?: Charles Alvin Jones was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

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21 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).