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 2007 / Served to 2008

James J. Fitzgerald

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

James J. Fitzgerald was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1939 · age 87
Tenure: 2007–2008

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania
Villanova University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fitzgerald authored 9 published opinions for the court (2007), plus 2 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Ratsamy (275 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. 13 of these were attributed to Fitzgerald 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. Ratsamy†	934 A.2d 1233	275
2007	Commonwealth v. Holmes· Concurrence†	933 A.2d 57	257
2007	Commonwealth v. Natividad†	938 A.2d 310	251
2007	Commonwealth v. Cooper†	941 A.2d 655	175
2007	Interest of K.L.S†	934 A.2d 1244	100
2007	Commonwealth v. Hernandez†	935 A.2d 1275	96
2007	Commonwealth v. States†	938 A.2d 1016	68
2007	Pennsylvania State University v. State Employees' Retirement Board†	935 A.2d 530	55
2007	Commonwealth v. Williams· Concurrence†	936 A.2d 12	49
2007	In the Interest of J.E.†	937 A.2d 421	32
2007	Beyers v. Richmond†	937 A.2d 1082	30
2007	Commonwealth v. Upshur· Dissent†	924 A.2d 642	25
2007	Commonwealth v. Russell· Dissent†	939 A.2d 289	1

Showing the 13 most-cited of 13 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 James J. Fitzgerald on?: James J. Fitzgerald 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

Joined the court in 2007. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).