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 1978 / Served to 1994

Rolf Larsen

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Rolf Larsen was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1978–1994 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Larsen authored 401 published opinions for the court (1978–1993), plus 361 dissents and 151 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Tuladziecki (739 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. 907 of these were attributed to Larsen 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. Tuladziecki· Dissent†	522 A.2d 17	739
1982	Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer†	454 A.2d 937	709
1979	Thompson Coal Co. v. Pike Coal Co.· Dissent†	412 A.2d 466	620
1987	Kachinski v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board· Concurrence†	532 A.2d 374	488
1986	Estate of McGovern v. Commonwealth, State Employees' Retirement Board· Dissent†	517 A.2d 523	423
1980	Gaito v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation & Parole†	412 A.2d 568	417
1987	Mascaro v. Youth Study Center· Dissent†	523 A.2d 1118	406
1978	Mayle v. Pennsylvania Department of Highways· Concurrence†	388 A.2d 709	385
1985	Peak v. Commonwealth, Unemployment Compensation Board of Review· Concurrence†	509 Pa. 267	355
1983	Guy v. Liederbach· Concurrence†	459 A.2d 744	333
1988	Commonwealth v. Lark†	543 A.2d 491	330
1993	Commonwealth v. Ellis· Dissent†	626 A.2d 1137	319
1987	Kazatsky v. King David Memorial Park, Inc.· Concurrence†	527 A.2d 988	318
1986	Commonwealth v. Gray· Concurrence†	503 A.2d 921	301
1991	Marks v. Tasman†	589 A.2d 205	294

Showing the 15 most-cited of 913 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 Rolf Larsen on?: Rolf Larsen 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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16 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).