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 2016 / Active

Kevin M. Dougherty

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Kevin M. Dougherty is a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 2016. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2016 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2016	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Dougherty authored 31 published opinions for the court (2016–2026), plus 12 dissents and 27 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Muniz, J., Aplt. (899 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. 70 of these were attributed to Dougherty 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
2017	Commonwealth v. Muniz, J., Aplt.†	164 A.3d 1189	899
2016	Commonwealth v. Washington, T., Aplt.· Concurrence†	142 A.3d 810	520
2018	In re T.S.· Concurrence†	192 A.3d 1080	421
2016	Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Wolfe, M.· Dissent†	140 A.3d 651	265
2019	Commonwealth v. Hicks, M., Aplt.· Concurrence†	208 A.3d 916	195
2017	Commonwealth v. Cousar, B., Aplt.†	154 A.3d 287	187
2016	A.S. v. Pennsylvania State Police†	143 A.3d 896	171
2017	Commonwealth v. Hicks, C., Aplt.†	156 A.3d 1114	119
2016	Commonwealth v. Giulian v. Aplt.†	141 A.3d 1262	87
2016	Commonwealth v. Barnes, K., Aplt.· Concurrence†	151 A.3d 121	86
2019	Commonwealth v. Natividad, R., Aplt.†	200 A.3d 11	75
2016	Commonwealth v. Hannibal, S., Aplt.†	156 A.3d 197	75
2018	Commonwealth v. Chambers· Dissent†	188 A.3d 400	72
2019	Justice, S., Aplt. v. Trooper Lombardo· Concurrence†	208 A.3d 1057	70
2017	PA State Police, Aplt. v. Grove, M.†	161 A.3d 877	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 70 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 is Kevin M. Dougherty on?: Kevin M. Dougherty is 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

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10 years on the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Data as of 2026-07-02. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).