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 / Active

John L. Musmanno

Judge, Superior Court of Pennsylvania

John L. Musmanno is a Judge of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2008 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

University of Pennsylvania
Villanova University

Judicial Record

In our data, Musmanno authored 184 published opinions for the court (1998–2021), plus 6 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: In re Z.S.W. (523 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. 100 of these were attributed to Musmanno 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
2008	In re Z.S.W.†	946 A.2d 726	523
2015	Commonwealth v. Talbert†	129 A.3d 536	446
2011	Commonwealth v. Widgins†	29 A.3d 816	411
2008	Commonwealth v. Bedell†	954 A.2d 1209	215
2014	Stephan v. Waldron Electric Heating & Cooling LLC· Dissent†	100 A.3d 660	119
2013	Commonwealth v. Matias†	63 A.3d 807	111
1998	Commonwealth v. Miller	715 A.2d 1203	108
2000	Commonwealth v. Jerman	762 A.2d 366	107
2012	Commonwealth v. Fransen· Concurrence†	42 A.3d 1100	99
2004	Commonwealth v. Geathers	847 A.2d 730	94
2018	Com. of Pa. v. Mangel†	181 A.3d 1154	81
2008	Commonwealth v. Morris†	958 A.2d 569	80
2000	Commonwealth v. Phinn	761 A.2d 176	80
2008	In the Interest of O.J.· Dissent†	958 A.2d 561	75
2000	In Re Estate of Daubert	757 A.2d 962	71

Showing the 15 most-cited of 197 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 is John L. Musmanno on?: John L. Musmanno is 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

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

18 years 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).