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 1905 / Served to 1912

John P. Elkin

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

John P. Elkin was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1905. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1860–1915
Tenure: 1905–1912 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1905	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Elkin authored 378 published opinions for the court (1905–1915), plus 8 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: McColligan v. Pennsylvania Railroad (68 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. 386 of these were attributed to Elkin 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
1906	McColligan v. Pennsylvania Railroad†	214 Pa. 229	68
1909	Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad's Tax Assessment†	224 Pa. 240	60
1909	Commonwealth v. Mortgage Trust Co.†	227 Pa. 163	56
1911	Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co. v. Northumberland County Commissioners†	229 Pa. 460	53
1909	Martin v. Pittsburg Railways Co.†	227 Pa. 18	49
1905	Singer Manufacturing Co. v. Christian†	211 Pa. 534	45
1912	Pennsylvania Stave Company's Appeal†	236 Pa. 97	44
1907	May's Estate†	218 Pa. 64	44
1908	Truitt v. Philadelphia· Concurrence†	221 Pa. 331	39
1912	Mercantile Library Co. v. Fidelity Trust Co.†	235 Pa. 5	38
1907	Louchheim v. Philadelphia†	218 Pa. 100	38
1909	Lehigh & Wilkes-Barre Coal Co.'s Assessment†	225 Pa. 272	37
1908	Washington's Estate†	220 Pa. 204	36
1907	Spring's Estate†	216 Pa. 529	35
1907	LaBar v. New York, Susquehanna & Western Railroad†	218 Pa. 261	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 387 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 P. Elkin on?: John P. Elkin 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

7 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).