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 1963 / Served to 1983

Samuel J. Roberts

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Samuel J. Roberts was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1963. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1907–1987
Tenure: 1963–1983 · 20 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1963	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Roberts authored 1,247 published opinions for the court (1963–1987), plus 571 dissents and 458 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth Ex Rel. Washington v. Maroney (1,351 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. 2,164 of these were attributed to Roberts 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
1967	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Washington v. Maroney†	427 Pa. 599	1,351
1977	Commonwealth v. Hubbard· Dissent†	372 A.2d 687	854
1974	Dilliplaine v. Lehigh Valley Trust Co.†	457 Pa. 255	817
1981	Commonwealth v. McClendon· Dissent†	434 A.2d 1185	771
1964	Griffith v. United Air Lines, Inc.†	416 Pa. 1	758
1978	Commonwealth v. Story†	383 A.2d 155	730
1982	Commonwealth v. Zettlemoyer· Dissent†	454 A.2d 937	709
1983	Standard Venetian Blind Co. v. American Empire Insurance†	469 A.2d 563	700
1975	Wm. Penn Parking Garage, Inc. v. City of Pittsburgh†	346 A.2d 269	640
1974	Geary v. United States Steel Corp.· Dissent†	456 Pa. 171	514
1977	Commonwealth v. Riggins†	377 A.2d 140	471
1975	Commonwealth v. Blair†	331 A.2d 213	461
1979	Sinn v. Burd· Dissent†	404 A.2d 672	424
1982	Steuart v. McChesney· Dissent†	444 A.2d 659	419
1975	Berkebile v. Brantly Helicopter Corp.· Concurrence†	337 A.2d 893	412

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,276 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 Samuel J. Roberts on?: Samuel J. Roberts 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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20 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).