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 1984 / Served to 1996

Nicholas P. Papadakos

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Nicholas P. Papadakos was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1984. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1925 · age 101
Tenure: 1984–1996 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1984	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Dickinson College

Judicial Record

In our data, Papadakos authored 208 published opinions for the court (1984–1995), plus 133 dissents and 87 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Pierce (2,071 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. 422 of these were attributed to Papadakos 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
1987	Commonwealth v. Pierce†	527 A.2d 973	2,071
1988	Commonwealth v. Devers†	546 A.2d 12	872
1991	Commonwealth v. Edmunds· Concurrence†	586 A.2d 887	776
1989	Com., Dept. of Transp. v. O'CONNELL†	555 A.2d 873	482
1985	Reilly v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority†	489 A.2d 1291	428
1987	Mascaro v. Youth Study Center†	523 A.2d 1118	406
1987	Kazatsky v. King David Memorial Park, Inc.· Concurrence†	527 A.2d 988	318
1991	Commonwealth v. Chambers†	599 A.2d 630	238
1992	Moure v. Raeuchle· Dissent†	604 A.2d 1003	227
1992	Commonwealth v. Valette†	613 A.2d 548	223
1992	Commonwealth v. Baker†	614 A.2d 663	216
1989	Commonwealth v. Durst†	559 A.2d 504	206
1986	Commonwealth v. Buehl†	508 A.2d 1167	203
1985	Commonwealth v. Pursell†	495 A.2d 183	203
1995	Lehigh County Vo-Tech School v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	652 A.2d 797	198

Showing the 15 most-cited of 428 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 Nicholas P. Papadakos on?: Nicholas P. Papadakos 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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12 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).