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 1943 / Served to 1945

Howard W. Hughes

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Howard W. Hughes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1943. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1882 · age 144
Tenure: 1943–1945 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1943	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Hughes authored 39 published opinions for the court (1944). Most cited: Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission v. Smith (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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1944	Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission v. Smith	39 A.2d 139	73
1944	Sarkees v. Warner-West Corp.	37 A.2d 544	70
1944	Huffman Estate (No. 3)	36 A.2d 640	63
1944	Condel v. Savo	39 A.2d 51	50
1944	Harvey Estate	38 A.2d 262	42
1944	Hartman v. Cohn	38 A.2d 22	35
1944	Pittsburgh Cut Wire Co. v. Sufrin	38 A.2d 33	35
1944	Rowles v. Evanuik	38 A.2d 255	33
1944	Union of Russian Societies of St. Michael & St. George, Inc. v. Koss	36 A.2d 433	30
1944	Wiegand v. Wiegand	37 A.2d 492	27
1944	Majors v. Majors	37 A.2d 528	23
1944	Commonwealth v. Kostan	37 A.2d 606	23
1944	McMeekin v. Prudential Insurance	36 A.2d 430	23
1944	Tennant v. Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection & Insurance	40 A.2d 385	21
1944	Federal Land Bank of Baltimore v. Putnam	39 A.2d 586	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 39 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 Howard W. Hughes on?: Howard W. Hughes was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

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2 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).