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 2004 / Former Justice

Max Baer

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Max Baer was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 2004. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 2004 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2004	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Duquesne University

Judicial Record

In our data, Baer authored 279 published opinions for the court (2004–2022), plus 80 dissents and 142 concurrences. Most cited: In re T.S.M. (2,012 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. 416 of these were attributed to Baer 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
2013	In re T.S.M.†	71 A.3d 251	2,012
2012	In re Adoption of S.P.†	47 A.3d 817	1,247
2010	In the Interest of R.J.T.†	9 A.3d 1179	967
2007	Commonwealth v. Walls· Concurrence†	926 A.2d 957	918
2013	Commonwealth v. Holmes· Concurrence†	79 A.3d 562	731
2005	Commonwealth v. Castillo†	888 A.2d 775	725
2013	In the Interest of L.J.†	79 A.3d 1073	659
2009	Commonwealth v. Pitts· Dissent†	981 A.2d 875	622
2007	Commonwealth v. Washington†	927 A.2d 586	593
2012	Commonwealth v. Koehler†	36 A.3d 121	580
2017	In Re: Adoption of: L.B.M., A Minor· Dissent†	161 A.3d 172	468
2006	Commonwealth v. Chester· Concurrence†	895 A.2d 520	452
2017	Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Burton, S.· Dissent†	158 A.3d 618	444
2005	Commonwealth v. Chmiel†	889 A.2d 501	431
2013	Commonwealth v. Edmiston†	65 A.3d 339	419

Showing the 15 most-cited of 501 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 Max Baer on?: Max Baer 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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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).