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 1960 / Served to 1980

Michael J. Eagen

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Michael J. Eagen was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1960. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1907–1987
Tenure: 1960–1980 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1960	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Scranton

Judicial Record

In our data, Eagen authored 1,009 published opinions for the court (1960–1980), plus 96 dissents and 68 concurrences. Most cited: Wm. Penn Parking Garage, Inc. v. City of Pittsburgh (640 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. 1,170 of these were attributed to Eagen 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
1975	Wm. Penn Parking Garage, Inc. v. City of Pittsburgh· Concurrence†	346 A.2d 269	640
1966	Webb v. Zern· Concurrence†	422 Pa. 424	513
1979	Sinn v. Burd· Concurrence†	404 A.2d 672	424
1975	Commonwealth v. Stoltzfus†	337 A.2d 873	382
1973	Commonwealth v. Campana· Concurrence†	452 Pa. 233	340
1976	Commonwealth v. Kichline· Dissent†	361 A.2d 282	312
1977	Brakeman v. Potomac Insurance Co.†	371 A.2d 193	300
1976	Commonwealth v. Shelton†	469 Pa. 8	279
1977	Commonwealth v. Sullivan· Dissent†	371 A.2d 468	264
1969	Commonwealth v. Hicks†	434 Pa. 153	263
1976	Lamp v. Heyman†	366 A.2d 882	255
1963	Gedeon v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance· Concurrence†	410 Pa. 55	234
1971	Corabi v. Curtis Publishing Co.†	441 Pa. 432	230
1963	Schaffer v. Larzelere†	410 Pa. 402	220
1975	Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board v. State College Area School District· Dissent†	337 A.2d 262	219

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,173 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 Michael J. Eagen on?: Michael J. Eagen was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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20 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).