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 1996 / Served to 2006

Sandra Schultz Newman

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Sandra Schultz Newman was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1996. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1938 · age 88
Tenure: 1996–2006 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1996	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Drexel University
Villanova University

Judicial Record

In our data, Newman authored 240 published opinions for the court (1996–2006), plus 91 dissents and 74 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Lord (1,456 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. 403 of these were attributed to Newman 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
1998	Commonwealth v. Lord· Concurrence†	719 A.2d 306	1,456
2000	Commonwealth v. Gamboa-Taylor†	753 A.2d 780	603
1999	Madison Construction Co. v. Harleysville Mutual Insurance· Dissent†	735 A.2d 100	547
1998	Matter of Adoption of Charles EDM, II†	708 A.2d 88	544
1999	Commonwealth v. Kimball†	724 A.2d 326	512
2001	Commonwealth v. Pierce†	786 A.2d 203	416
2003	Commonwealth v. McGill†	832 A.2d 1014	412
2006	Commonwealth v. Spotz†	896 A.2d 1191	402
1997	Commonwealth v. Jones†	700 A.2d 423	378
2000	Harman Ex Rel. Harman v. Borah†	756 A.2d 1116	354
2003	Daniels v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board· Concurrence†	828 A.2d 1043	327
2003	Christianson v. Ely†	838 A.2d 630	285
1999	Bortz v. Noon†	729 A.2d 555	280
1999	Commonwealth v. Pursell†	724 A.2d 293	278
2003	Grady v. Frito-Lay, Inc.· Concurrence†	839 A.2d 1038	277

Showing the 15 most-cited of 405 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 Sandra Schultz Newman on?: Sandra Schultz Newman 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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10 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).