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 1953 / Served to 1958

John C. Arnold

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

John C. Arnold was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1953. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1887–1958
Tenure: 1953–1958 · 5 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1953	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Arnold authored 163 published opinions for the court (1953–1958), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Burke v. Pittsburgh Limestone Corp. (89 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. 165 of these were attributed to Arnold 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
1953	Burke v. Pittsburgh Limestone Corp.†	375 Pa. 390	89
1956	Commonwealth v. Wright†	383 Pa. 532	65
1957	Necho Coal Co. v. Denise Coal Co.†	387 Pa. 567	59
1957	Hughes v. Chaplin†	389 Pa. 93	53
1953	Powell v. Risser†	375 Pa. 60	53
1956	MacK Appeal†	386 Pa. 251	50
1953	Paustenbaugh v. Ward Baking Co.†	374 Pa. 418	50
1955	Commonwealth v. Thomas†	382 Pa. 639	44
1957	Commonwealth v. Russo· Dissent†	388 Pa. 462	43
1955	Balla v. Sladek†	381 Pa. 85	43
1953	Plunkett Chemical Co. v. Reeve†	373 Pa. 513	43
1953	Commonwealth v. Bibalo†	375 Pa. 257	42
1954	Pascarella v. Kelley†	378 Pa. 18	41
1955	Commonwealth v. Cisneros†	381 Pa. 447	35
1957	Gagnon v. Speback†	389 Pa. 17	32

Showing the 15 most-cited of 165 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 John C. Arnold on?: John C. Arnold 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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5 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).