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 1979 / Active

Robert W. Williams Jr.

Judge, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania

Robert W. Williams Jr. is a Judge of the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, serving since 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1979 · 47 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Williams authored 534 published opinions for the court (1980–1985), plus 8 dissents. Most cited: Krantz v. Commonwealth (115 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. 516 of these were attributed to Williams 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
1984	Krantz v. Commonwealth†	86 Pa. Commw. 38	115
1984	Chapman v. Commonwealth†	86 Pa. Commw. 49	87
1983	Latella v. Commonwealth†	74 Pa. Commw. 14	76
1980	Commonwealth v. Pennsylvania Engineering Corp.†	54 Pa. Commw. 376	58
1984	Murphy v. Commonwealth†	85 Pa. Commw. 23	51
1981	Yellow Freight System, Inc. v. Commonwealth†	56 Pa. Commw. 1	50
1984	Morris v. Musser†	84 Pa. Commw. 170	44
1981	Beckert v. American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, District Council 88†	56 Pa. Commw. 572	42
1984	Hando v. Commonwealth†	84 Pa. Commw. 63	40
1980	Fashion Hosiery Shops v. Commonwealth, Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	55 Pa. Commw. 465	37
1981	Eshelman v. Commissioners of Berks†	62 Pa. Commw. 310	36
1985	Unionville-Chadds Ford School District v. Rotteveel†	87 Pa. Commw. 334	34
1984	Hirschberg v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	81 Pa. Commw. 579	34
1980	Marlowe v. Zoning Hearing Board†	52 Pa. Commw. 224	34
1985	O'Hara v. Commonwealth†	87 Pa. Commw. 356	33

Showing the 15 most-cited of 542 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 W. Williams Jr. on?: Robert W. Williams Jr. 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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47 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).