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 1983 / Served to 2002

Stephen A. Zappala

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Stephen A. Zappala was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1983–2002 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Zappala authored 467 published opinions for the court (1983–2002), plus 214 dissents and 169 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Pierce (2,071 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. 836 of these were attributed to Zappala 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. Pierce· Dissent†	527 A.2d 973	2,071
1987	Commonwealth v. Tuladziecki†	522 A.2d 17	739
1999	Commonwealth v. Kimball· Concurrence†	724 A.2d 326	512
1984	Feld v. Merriam· Concurrence†	485 A.2d 742	477
1994	In Re Adoption of Atencio†	650 A.2d 1064	421
2001	Murphy v. Duquesne University of Holy Ghost· Concurrence†	777 A.2d 418	387
1994	Renk v. City of Pittsburgh†	641 A.2d 289	337
2001	Commonwealth v. Breakiron†	781 A.2d 94	323
1999	Commonwealth v. Small· Dissent†	741 A.2d 666	320
2001	In the Interest of D.M.· Dissent†	781 A.2d 1161	270
1993	House v. Workmen's Compensation Appeal Board†	634 A.2d 592	260
2002	Leon E. Wintermyer, Inc. v. Workers' Compensation Appeal Board· Concurrence†	812 A.2d 478	259
1999	Commonwealth v. Williams†	733 A.2d 593	255
1999	Commonwealth v. Cook· Dissent†	735 A.2d 673	242
1985	Fried v. Fried· Dissent†	501 A.2d 211	240

Showing the 15 most-cited of 850 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 Stephen A. Zappala on?: Stephen A. Zappala 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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19 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).