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 1983 / Served to 1990

Francis A. Barry

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Francis A. Barry was a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1983–1990 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Duquesne University
Duquesne University

Judicial Record

In our data, Barry authored 569 published opinions for the court (1983–1992), plus 40 dissents and 15 concurrences. Most cited: King Et Vir v. Breach (73 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. 478 of these were attributed to Barry 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
1988	King Et Vir v. Breach	540 A.2d 976	73
1986	Reider v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole· Dissent†	514 A.2d 967	69
1990	Crowell v. City of Philadelphia	570 A.2d 626	41
1991	Tobin v. Radnor Township Board of Commissioners	597 A.2d 1258	38
1990	Lancie v. Giles†	572 A.2d 827	35
1988	Parker v. Commonwealth	540 A.2d 313	35
1986	Hess v. COUNTY OF LANCASTER	514 A.2d 681	31
1990	Manheim Central Education Ass'n v. Manheim Central School District· Dissent†	572 A.2d 31	30
1988	Friedlander v. Zoning Hearing Board	546 A.2d 755	30
1984	Coades v. Commonwealth, Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole· Dissent†	84 Pa. Commw. 484	30
1984	Wyke v. Ward†	81 Pa. Commw. 392	30
1988	Gallagher v. COM. OF PA., BUR. OF CORR.	545 A.2d 981	29
1984	Kraemer v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	82 Pa. Commw. 469	29
1990	Krumins Roofing & Siding v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	575 A.2d 656	28
1991	Wortman v. Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations	591 A.2d 331	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 624 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 was Francis A. Barry on?: Francis A. Barry was a Judge of the Commonwealth 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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7 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).