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 1962 / Served to 1983

Henry X. O'Brien

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Henry X. O'Brien was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1962. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1903–1990
Tenure: 1962–1983 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1962	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Duquesne University
Gannon University
Saint Francis Medical Center College of Nursing

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Brien authored 657 published opinions for the court (1962–1982), plus 19 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. McClendon (771 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. 680 of these were attributed to O'Brien 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. McClendon· Dissent†	434 A.2d 1185	771
1978	Mayle v. Pennsylvania Department of Highways· Dissent†	388 A.2d 709	385
1981	Laudenberger v. Port Auth. of Allegheny†	436 A.2d 147	296
1963	Chambers v. Montgomery†	411 Pa. 339	229
1968	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Butler v. Rundle†	429 Pa. 141	222
1979	Commonwealth v. DeJohn†	403 A.2d 1283	216
1975	Singer v. Sheppard· Dissent†	346 A.2d 897	206
1982	Commonwealth v. Stanley· Dissent†	446 A.2d 583	192
1968	Harleysville Mutual Casualty Co. v. Blumling†	429 Pa. 389	172
1975	Commonwealth v. McCutchen†	343 A.2d 669	165
1981	Anthony v. Koppers Co., Inc.· Dissent†	436 A.2d 181	145
1970	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Smith v. Myers†	438 Pa. 218	143
1981	Commonwealth v. Nazarovitch†	436 A.2d 170	141
1975	Commonwealth v. Triplett†	341 A.2d 62	139
1974	Commonwealth v. Demmitt†	456 Pa. 475	139

Showing the 15 most-cited of 680 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 Henry X. O'Brien on?: Henry X. O'Brien 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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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).