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 2002 / Former Justice

J. Michael Eakin

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

J. Michael Eakin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 2002. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1948 · age 78
Tenure: 2002 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Franklin and Marshall College

Judicial Record

In our data, Eakin authored 243 published opinions for the court (2002–2017), plus 133 dissents and 135 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Bennett (1,230 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. 446 of these were attributed to Eakin 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
2007	Commonwealth v. Bennett· Dissent†	930 A.2d 1264	1,230
2014	Commonwealth v. Fears†	86 A.3d 795	803
2013	Commonwealth v. Holmes· Concurrence†	79 A.3d 562	731
2002	Commonwealth v. Mouzon· Dissent†	812 A.2d 617	702
2013	In the Interest of L.J.· Concurrence†	79 A.3d 1073	659
2015	Commonwealth v. Treiber, S., Aplt	121 A.3d 435	629
2009	Commonwealth v. Pitts†	981 A.2d 875	622
2008	Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal†	941 A.2d 1263	494
2015	Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Hopkins, K.· Dissent†	117 A.3d 247	395
2014	Commonwealth v. Blakeney· Concurrence†	108 A.3d 739	395
2011	Commonwealth v. Paddy· Concurrence†	15 A.3d 431	385
2007	Commonwealth v. Ragan†	923 A.2d 1169	366
2014	Bruno, D., Aplts. v. Erie Insurance· Concurrence†	106 A.3d 48	356
2004	Commonwealth v. D'Amato· Concurrence†	856 A.2d 806	351
2008	Commonwealth v. Wright†	961 A.2d 119	339

Showing the 15 most-cited of 512 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 J. Michael Eakin on?: J. Michael Eakin 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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24 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).