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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 1978 / Served to 1988

John A. MacPhail

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

John A. MacPhail was a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1978–1988 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, MacPhail authored 1,135 published opinions for the court (1978–1988), plus 51 dissents and 24 concurrences. Most cited: Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board (82 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. 1,030 of these were attributed to MacPhail 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
1983	Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board· Dissent†	77 Pa. Commw. 202	82
1986	Reider v. Pa. Bd. of Prob. & Parole	514 A.2d 967	69
1981	Commonwealth v. E. J. Albrecht Co.†	59 Pa. Commw. 246	55
1981	Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Bar Ass'n v. Thornburgh†	62 Pa. Commw. 88	54
1979	Lake v. Commonwealth†	48 Pa. Commw. 138	54
1981	Spicer v. Commonwealth, Department of Public Welfare†	58 Pa. Commw. 558	51
1980	Lashe v. Northern York County School District†	52 Pa. Commw. 541	50
1979	Brungard v. HARTMAN· Concurrence†	46 Pa. Commw. 10	48
1980	Allen v. Colautti	53 Pa. Commw. 392	47
1987	Kaites v. Commonwealth	529 A.2d 1148	41
1985	Russella v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	91 Pa. Commw. 471	37
1982	Muehleisen v. Commonwealth, State Civil Service Commission†	66 Pa. Commw. 95	37
1982	Fritz v. Commonwealth, Unemployment Compensation Board of Review†	66 Pa. Commw. 492	36
1988	Lawson v. PA. DEPT. OF CORR.	539 A.2d 69	35
1982	Grabish v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	70 Pa. Commw. 542	34

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,210 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 Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was John A. MacPhail on?: John A. MacPhail was a Judge of the Commonwealth 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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10 years on the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).