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 1972 / Served to 1996

Robert N.C. Nix Jr.

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Robert N.C. Nix Jr. was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1972. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1928–2003
Tenure: 1972–1996 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1972	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Villanova University

Judicial Record

In our data, Nix authored 711 published opinions for the court (1972–1996), plus 306 dissents and 264 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. 1,260 of these were attributed to Nix 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· Concurrence†	527 A.2d 973	2,071
1981	Commonwealth v. McClendon†	434 A.2d 1185	771
1974	Commonwealth v. Clair†	458 Pa. 418	732
1982	Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer· Dissent†	454 A.2d 937	709
1983	Standard Venetian Blind Co. v. American Empire Insurance· Dissent†	469 A.2d 563	700
1979	Thompson Coal Co. v. Pike Coal Co.†	412 A.2d 466	620
1983	Valley View Civic Ass'n v. Zoning Board of Adjustment†	462 A.2d 637	562
1979	Sinn v. Burd†	404 A.2d 672	424
1985	Commonwealth v. Dugger· Concurrence†	486 A.2d 382	417
1980	Gaito v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole· Concurrence†	412 A.2d 568	417
1978	Azzarello v. Black Bros. Co., Inc.†	391 A.2d 1020	413
1976	Commonwealth v. Farquharson†	354 A.2d 545	388
1994	Commonwealth v. Brown· Concurrence†	648 A.2d 1177	387
1973	Commonwealth v. Campana· Concurrence†	452 Pa. 233	340
1983	Guy v. Liederbach· Concurrence†	459 A.2d 744	333

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,281 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 Robert N.C. Nix Jr. on?: Robert N.C. Nix Jr. 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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24 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).