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 1940 / Served to 1950

Marion D. Patterson

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Marion D. Patterson was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1940. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1876–1950
Tenure: 1940–1950 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1940	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Patterson authored 344 published opinions for the court (1931–1950), plus 23 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Belovsky v. Redevelopment Authority (203 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. 10 of these were attributed to Patterson 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
1947	Belovsky v. Redevelopment Authority· Dissent	54 A.2d 277	203
1943	Commonwealth v. Libonati	31 A.2d 95	126
1940	Commonwealth v. Turza	16 A.2d 401	126
1949	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Children's Aid Society v. Gard· Dissent	66 A.2d 300	105
1945	Siidekum v. Animal Rescue League of Pittsburgh· Concurrence	45 A.2d 59	88
1945	McKrell v. McKrell	42 A.2d 609	82
1944	Burtt Will· Dissent	44 A.2d 670	69
1947	Commonwealth v. Barnak· Concurrence	54 A.2d 865	67
1941	Commonwealth v. Jones	19 A.2d 389	62
1949	Springfield Township v. Indemnity Insurance Co. of North America	64 A.2d 761	60
1945	American Labor Party Case	44 A.2d 48	60
1942	Sidle v. Kaufman	29 A.2d 77	57
1946	Pierce v. Pierce	49 A.2d 346	55
1940	Hamilton's Appeal	16 A.2d 32	55
1945	Capozzoli v. Stone & Webster Engineering Corp.	42 A.2d 524	53

Showing the 15 most-cited of 370 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 Marion D. Patterson on?: Marion D. Patterson 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

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10 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).