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 2010 / Served to 2013

Joan Orie Melvin

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Joan Orie Melvin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1966 · age 60
Tenure: 2010–2013 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Duquesne University

Judicial Record

In our data, Melvin authored 16 published opinions for the court (2010–2012), plus 4 dissents and 5 concurrences. Most cited: In the Interest of R.J.T. (967 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. 25 of these were attributed to Melvin 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
2010	In the Interest of R.J.T.· Dissent†	9 A.3d 1179	967
2011	Commonwealth v. Watts†	23 A.3d 980	378
2011	Commonwealth v. Jette†	23 A.3d 1032	371
2011	Commonwealth v. Sanchez· Concurrence†	36 A.3d 24	300
2011	In re R.I.S.· Dissent†	36 A.3d 567	277
2011	Commonwealth v. Ramtahal†	33 A.3d 602	191
2012	Daley v. A.W. Chesterton, Inc.· Dissent†	37 A.3d 1175	75
2011	Williams v. Geico Government Employees Insurance†	32 A.3d 1195	71
2011	In Re Adoption of L.J.B.· Dissent†	18 A.3d 1098	61
2012	K.E.M. v. P.C.S.· Concurrence†	38 A.3d 798	59
2012	Mohamed v. Commonwealth, Department of Transportation, Bureau of Motor Vehicles†	40 A.3d 1186	49
2010	Commonwealth v. Reed†	9 A.3d 1138	45
2010	Commonwealth v. Grahame†	7 A.3d 810	45
2011	Heller v. Pennsylvania League of Cities & Municipalities†	32 A.3d 1213	40
2010	Commonwealth v. Williams†	9 A.3d 613	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 25 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 Joan Orie Melvin on?: Joan Orie Melvin 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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3 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).