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 1950 / Served to 1972

John C. Bell Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

John C. Bell Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1950. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1892–1974
Tenure: 1950–1972 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1950	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Bell authored 864 published opinions for the court (1950–1971), plus 349 dissents and 148 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth Ex Rel. Washington v. Maroney (1,351 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. 1,361 of these were attributed to Bell 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
1967	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Washington v. Maroney· Concurrence†	427 Pa. 599	1,351
1964	Griffith v. United Air Lines, Inc.· Dissent†	416 Pa. 1	758
1954	Commonwealth v. Kloiber†	378 Pa. 412	530
1966	Webb v. Zern· Dissent†	422 Pa. 424	513
1959	Smith v. Bell Telephone Co.· Concurrence†	397 Pa. 134	362
1971	Incollingo v. EWING· Concurrence†	444 Pa. 263	315
1970	Niederman v. Brodsky· Dissent†	436 Pa. 401	260
1958	Commonwealth v. Redline· Dissent†	391 Pa. 486	229
1969	Schott v. Westinghouse Electric Corp.· Dissent†	436 Pa. 279	226
1970	CIPOLLA v. Shaposka· Concurrence†	439 Pa. 563	220
1965	Deitch Co. v. Board of Property Assessment· Dissent†	417 Pa. 213	219
1970	Hoffman v. Misericordia Hospital· Dissent†	439 Pa. 501	199
1965	Flagiello v. Pennsylvania Hospital· Dissent†	417 Pa. 486	182
1964	Nesbitt v. Erie Coach Co.· Dissent†	416 Pa. 89	182
1965	Evans v. Philadelphia Transportation Co.· Concurrence†	418 Pa. 567	180

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,361 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. Bell Jr. on?: John C. Bell Jr. 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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21 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).