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 1979 / Served to 2001

John P. Flaherty

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

John P. Flaherty was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1979. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1979–2001 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara	–	–
1979	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Duquesne University

Judicial Record

In our data, Flaherty authored 668 published opinions for the court (1979–2002), plus 152 dissents and 123 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Turner (4,184 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. 929 of these were attributed to Flaherty 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
1988	Commonwealth v. Turner†	544 A.2d 927	4,184
1998	Commonwealth v. Grazier†	713 A.2d 81	1,461
1993	In re E.M.†	533 Pa. 115	539
1998	Commonwealth v. Peterkin†	722 A.2d 638	447
1983	Pocono International Raceway, Inc. v. Pocono Produce, Inc.†	468 A.2d 468	439
1986	Estate of McGovern v. Commonwealth, State Employees' Retirement Board†	517 A.2d 523	423
1982	Steuart v. McChesney†	444 A.2d 659	419
1994	Commonwealth v. Brown†	648 A.2d 1177	387
1993	Commonwealth v. Ellis†	626 A.2d 1137	319
1983	Carrender v. Fitterer· Concurrence†	469 A.2d 120	317
1989	Clay v. Advanced Computer Applications, Inc.†	559 A.2d 917	282
1997	Commonwealth v. Ahlborn†	699 A.2d 718	277
1992	Bethenergy Mines, Inc. v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	612 A.2d 434	272
1992	Commonwealth v. Smith†	615 A.2d 321	264
2000	Althaus Ex Rel. Althaus v. Cohen· Dissent†	756 A.2d 1166	259

Showing the 15 most-cited of 943 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. Flaherty on?: John P. Flaherty 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.

22 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).