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 1982 / Served to 1992

James T. McDermott

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

James T. McDermott was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1982. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1926–1992
Tenure: 1982–1992 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1982	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Saint Josephs College
Temple University

Judicial Record

In our data, McDermott authored 217 published opinions for the court (1982–1992), plus 111 dissents and 99 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Edmunds (776 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. 423 of these were attributed to McDermott 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
1991	Commonwealth v. Edmunds· Dissent†	586 A.2d 887	776
1987	Kachinski v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	532 A.2d 374	488
1984	Feld v. Merriam†	485 A.2d 742	477
1985	Commonwealth v. Dugger†	486 A.2d 382	417
1985	Peak v. Commonwealth, Unemployment Compensation Board of Review· Concurrence†	509 Pa. 267	355
1983	Guy v. Liederbach· Dissent†	459 A.2d 744	333
1985	Martin v. Johns-Manville Corp.· Concurrence†	494 A.2d 1088	274
1983	Commonwealth v. Sell· Dissent†	470 A.2d 457	268
1986	Feingold v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority†	517 A.2d 1270	253
1983	Morena v. South Hills Health System†	462 A.2d 680	253
1991	Commonwealth v. Chambers· Concurrence†	599 A.2d 630	238
1989	Commonwealth v. Hughes· Concurrence†	555 A.2d 1264	237
1988	Commonwealth v. Hardcastle†	546 A.2d 1101	233
1992	Moure v. Raeuchle†	604 A.2d 1003	227
1983	Commonwealth v. MacOlino†	469 A.2d 132	227

Showing the 15 most-cited of 427 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 T. McDermott on?: James T. McDermott 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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10 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).