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 1977 / Served to 1978

Israel Packel

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Israel Packel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1907–1987
Tenure: 1977–1978 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Packel authored 13 published opinions for the court (1977), plus 3 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: E. J. McAleer & Co. v. Iceland Products, Inc. (110 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. 18 of these were attributed to Packel 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
1977	E. J. McAleer & Co. v. Iceland Products, Inc.· Dissent†	381 A.2d 441	110
1977	Commonwealth v. Johnson†	378 A.2d 859	66
1977	Commonwealth v. Wright†	374 A.2d 1272	56
1977	Incollingo v. Ewing· Concurrence†	379 A.2d 79	42
1977	Greer v. United States Steel Corp.†	380 A.2d 1221	37
1977	In Re District Attorney's Investigation of Police Shooting of Reyes· Dissent†	381 A.2d 865	21
1977	Commonwealth v. Jamison· Concurrence†	379 A.2d 87	19
1977	Commonwealth v. Townsell†	379 A.2d 98	16
1977	Borough of Scottdale v. National Cable Television Corp.†	381 A.2d 859	11
1977	Commonwealth v. Young· Dissent†	376 A.2d 990	10
1977	Commonwealth v. Shaffer†	380 A.2d 341	9
1977	Commonwealth v. Daniels†	377 A.2d 1376	8
1977	Commonwealth v. Cambric†	380 A.2d 1224	7
1977	Fox v. Central Delaware County Authority†	381 A.2d 448	7
1977	Commonwealth v. Lee†	380 A.2d 371	7

Showing the 15 most-cited of 18 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 Israel Packel on?: Israel Packel was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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1 year 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).