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 1952 / Served to 1968

Michael A. Musmanno

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Michael A. Musmanno was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (7 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1952. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1897–1968
Tenure: 1952–1968 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1952	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

George Washington University
Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Musmanno authored 584 published opinions for the court (1952–1968), plus 390 dissents and 52 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Kloiber (530 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. 1,026 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
1954	Commonwealth v. Kloiber· Concurrence†	378 Pa. 412	530
1959	Ayers v. Morgan†	397 Pa. 282	281
1954	Blumenschein v. Pittsburgh Housing Authority· Dissent†	379 Pa. 566	200
1965	Flagiello v. Pennsylvania Hospital†	417 Pa. 486	182
1960	Commonwealth v. Kravitz· Dissent†	400 Pa. 198	174
1959	Commonwealth v. Koczwara· Dissent†	397 Pa. 575	173
1955	Commonwealth v. Bolish· Concurrence†	381 Pa. 500	148
1960	Commonwealth v. Woodhouse· Dissent†	401 Pa. 242	131
1954	Wilson v. Maryland Casualty Co.· Dissent†	377 Pa. 588	131
1952	Lanni v. Pennsylvania Railroad· Dissent†	371 Pa. 106	126
1957	Easton v. Washington County Insurance· Dissent†	391 Pa. 28	124
1961	William Goldman Theatres, Inc. v. Dana· Dissent†	405 Pa. 83	121
1959	Elza v. Chovan· Dissent†	396 Pa. 112	120
1965	Hurtt v. Stirone· Dissent†	416 Pa. 493	115
1952	Travis v. Teter· Dissent†	370 Pa. 326	113

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,026 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 A. Musmanno on?: Michael A. Musmanno 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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16 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).