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 2012 / Active

Robert Simpson

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Robert Simpson is a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 2012. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2012 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2012	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Simpson authored 259 published opinions for the court (2002–2019), plus 11 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Lerch v. Unemployment Comp. Bd. of Review (248 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. 152 of these were attributed to Simpson 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
2018	Lerch v. Unemployment Comp. Bd. of Review	180 A.3d 545	248
2014	Johns v. Unemployment Compensation Board of Review†	87 A.3d 1006	228
2014	Allen v. Commonwealth, Department of Corrections	103 A.3d 365	129
2014	Kittrell v. Watson†	88 A.3d 1091	104
2013	A & J Builders, Inc. v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board†	78 A.3d 1233	100
2015	Protz v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board· Dissent†	124 A.3d 406	95
2014	Tri-County Landfill, Inc. v. Pine Township Zoning Hearing Board†	83 A.3d 488	94
2013	Carey v. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections†	61 A.3d 367	90
2013	Kull v. Guisse†	81 A.3d 148	79
2005	Adams v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole	885 A.2d 1121	71
2007	Lawrence v. Pennsylvania Department of Corrections	941 A.2d 70	64
2016	Palmer v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole	134 A.3d 160	58
2018	Phantom Fireworks Showrooms, LLC v. Tom Wolf, Governor of the Comwlth of PA	198 A.3d 1205	56
2014	Levy v. Senate of Pennsylvania†	94 A.3d 436	51
2015	Tidd v. Lower Saucon Township Zoning Hearing Board†	118 A.3d 1	50

Showing the 15 most-cited of 278 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 is Robert Simpson on?: Robert Simpson is 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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14 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).