How do judges of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Superior Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 2008 / Served to 2009

John M. Cleland

Judge, Superior Court of Pennsylvania

John M. Cleland was a Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2008–2009 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Superior Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Denison University
George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Cleland authored 13 published opinions for the court (2009), plus 3 concurrences. Most cited: R.M.G. v. F.M.G. (151 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. 16 of these were attributed to Cleland 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
2009	R.M.G. v. F.M.G.†	986 A.2d 1234	151
2009	Commonwealth v. Marquez· Concurrence†	980 A.2d 145	58
2009	Commonwealth v. Nava†	966 A.2d 630	55
2009	Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. v. Ralich†	982 A.2d 77	51
2009	SZYMANOWSKI v. Brace†	987 A.2d 717	44
2009	Zimmerman v. Harrisburg Fudd I, L.P.†	984 A.2d 497	36
2009	Commonwealth v. Cascardo†	981 A.2d 245	36
2009	Archibald v. Kemble†	971 A.2d 513	33
2009	Commonwealth v. Snavely†	982 A.2d 1244	16
2009	Lebanon County Housing Authority v. Landeck†	967 A.2d 1009	15
2009	Zeidman v. Fisher†	980 A.2d 637	14
2009	Commonwealth v. Wilgus†	975 A.2d 1183	12
2009	Bingaman v. Bingaman†	980 A.2d 155	6
2009	Commonwealth v. Kneller· Concurrence†	971 A.2d 495	4
2009	Kane v. Vigunas· Concurrence†	967 A.2d 987	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 16 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 Superior Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was John M. Cleland on?: John M. Cleland was a Judge of the Superior 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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1 year on the Superior Court of Pennsylvania. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).