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 2008 / Active

Debra Todd

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Debra Todd is a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: Since 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Todd authored 243 published opinions for the court (2008–2026), plus 49 dissents and 63 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Clay (985 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. 219 of these were attributed to Todd 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
2013	Commonwealth v. Clay†	64 A.3d 1049	985
2013	Commonwealth v. Holmes· Concurrence†	79 A.3d 562	731
2016	Commonwealth v. Washington, T., Aplt.· Concurrence†	142 A.3d 810	520
2017	Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Burton, S.†	158 A.3d 618	444
2010	Commonwealth v. Jones· Concurrence†	988 A.2d 649	433
2013	Commonwealth v. Edmiston· Concurrence†	65 A.3d 339	419
2011	Commonwealth v. Briggs†	12 A.3d 291	417
2011	Commonwealth v. Lesko· Concurrence†	15 A.3d 345	398
2015	Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Hopkins, K.	117 A.3d 247	395
2013	Commonwealth v. Simpson†	66 A.3d 253	361
2014	Bruno, D., Aplts. v. Erie Insurance	106 A.3d 48	356
2013	Bowling v. Office of Open Records· Dissent†	75 A.3d 453	336
2013	Commonwealth v. Turner· Dissent†	80 A.3d 754	311
2012	Commonwealth v. Brown†	52 A.3d 1139	299
2011	In re R.I.S.· Concurrence†	36 A.3d 567	277

Showing the 15 most-cited of 355 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 is Debra Todd on?: Debra Todd is a Chief 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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18 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).