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 1935 / Served to 1940

H. Edgar Barnes

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

H. Edgar Barnes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1883–1940
Tenure: 1935–1940 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Barnes authored 242 published opinions for the court (1935–1940), plus 5 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Funk (182 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. 2 of these were attributed to Barnes 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
1936	Commonwealth v. Funk	186 A. 65	182
1936	Beaver County Building & Loan Ass'n v. Winowich· Dissent	187 A. 481	119
1939	Commonwealth v. Cronin	9 A.2d 408	96
1936	Deemer v. Weaver, Exrx.	187 A. 215	91
1937	McCown v. Fraser	192 A. 674	83
1940	Stelmack v. Glen Alden Coal Co.	14 A.2d 127	64
1935	Vetter v. Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.	185 A. 613	58
1939	Maurer v. Boardman	7 A.2d 466	56
1937	Commonwealth v. Stelma	192 A. 906	56
1936	Brennan's Estate	188 A. 160	56
1939	Cameron v. Berger	7 A.2d 293	52
1938	Goodman v. Corn Exchange National Bank & Trust Co.	200 A. 642	42
1940	Naffah v. City Deposit Bank	13 A.2d 63	41
1939	Scott v. McEwing	10 A.2d 436	40
1939	Waits' Estate	7 A.2d 329	40

Showing the 15 most-cited of 248 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 H. Edgar Barnes on?: H. Edgar Barnes 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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5 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).