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 2008 / Served to 2014

Seamus P. McCaffery

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Seamus P. McCaffery was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 2008. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1950 · age 76
Tenure: 2008–2014 · 6 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2008	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

La Salle University

Judicial Record

In our data, McCaffery authored 94 published opinions for the court (2008–2024), plus 25 dissents and 10 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Spotz (764 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. 115 of these were attributed to McCaffery 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
2011	Commonwealth v. Spotz†	18 A.3d 244	764
2013	In the Interest of L.J.· Dissent†	79 A.3d 1073	659
2009	Commonwealth v. Johnson†	985 A.2d 915	642
2008	Commonwealth v. Marshall†	947 A.2d 714	562
2011	Commonwealth v. Chmiel†	30 A.3d 1111	553
2013	Commonwealth v. Roney†	79 A.3d 595	496
2010	Commonwealth v. Jones†	988 A.2d 649	433
2011	Commonwealth v. Paddy†	15 A.3d 431	385
2013	Bowling v. Office of Open Records†	75 A.3d 453	336
2011	Commonwealth v. Hutchinson†	25 A.3d 277	298
2011	In re R.I.S.†	36 A.3d 567	277
2013	Commonwealth v. Sanchez†	82 A.3d 943	272
2014	Commonwealth v. Gary†	91 A.3d 102	255
2008	Commonwealth v. Baumhammers†	960 A.2d 59	216
2012	Commonwealth v. Spotz†	47 A.3d 63	186

Showing the 15 most-cited of 129 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 Seamus P. McCaffery on?: Seamus P. McCaffery 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

6 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).