How do judges of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania / Joined 1977 / Served to 1979

Richard Disalle

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Richard Disalle was a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania (12 judges, selected by partisan election), who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1977–1979 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Disalle authored 185 published opinions for the court (1977–1979), plus 17 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Zemprelli v. Thornburgh (41 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. 198 of these were attributed to Disalle 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
1979	Zemprelli v. Thornburgh· Concurrence†	47 Pa. Commw. 43	41
1979	Rodriques v. Commonwealth†	44 Pa. Commw. 68	36
1979	Estate of Armstrong v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole· Concurrence†	46 Pa. Commw. 33	32
1979	Ullo v. Commonwealth†	41 Pa. Commw. 204	30
1978	Bureau of Traffic Safety v. Jones	38 Pa. Commw. 400	28
1979	Bureau of Traffic Safety v. GROBES.	45 Pa. Commw. 151	27
1979	Hoffner v. Hodge· Concurrence†	47 Pa. Commw. 277	26
1979	Nagle v. Pennsylvania Insurance Department· Concurrence†	46 Pa. Commw. 621	25
1978	Martin v. Commonwealth, Unemployment Compensation Board of Review†	36 Pa. Commw. 304	25
1979	Edmond v. Commonwealth†	43 Pa. Commw. 458	22
1978	Flynn v. Asten Hill Manufacturing Co.· Concurrence†	34 Pa. Commw. 218	20
1978	Valley Forge Industries, Inc. v. Armand Construction, Inc.†	38 Pa. Commw. 603	19
1979	Katz v. Commonwealth†	40 Pa. Commw. 1	17
1978	In re Condemnation by the Commonwealth†	38 Pa. Commw. 535	17
1978	Commonwealth v. Commonwealth†	34 Pa. Commw. 265	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 215 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 Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Richard Disalle on?: Richard Disalle was a Judge of the Commonwealth 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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2 years on the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).