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 1950 / Served to 1958

Thomas McKeen Chidsey

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Thomas McKeen Chidsey was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1950. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1884–1958
Tenure: 1950–1958 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1950	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Chidsey authored 252 published opinions for the court (1852–1958), plus 12 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Knaus v. Knaus (142 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. 267 of these were attributed to Chidsey 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
1956	Knaus v. Knaus†	387 Pa. 370	142
1956	Blue Anchor Overall Co. v. Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual Insurance†	385 Pa. 394	123
1955	Kelly v. Philadelphia†	382 Pa. 459	109
1951	Fisher v. Hill†	368 Pa. 53	89
1951	Miller v. Hickey· Dissent†	368 Pa. 317	84
1955	Commonwealth v. Moon†	383 Pa. 18	82
1956	Lombardo v. Gasparini Excavating Co.†	385 Pa. 388	78
1954	Commonwealth v. Kilgallen†	379 Pa. 315	78
1954	Rahn v. Hess†	378 Pa. 264	71
1951	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Graham v. Graham†	367 Pa. 553	69
1952	International Electronics Co. v. N. S. T. Metal Products Co.†	370 Pa. 213	66
1952	Pittsburgh v. Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission†	370 Pa. 305	65
1951	Cummings v. Kelling Nut Co.†	368 Pa. 448	61
1957	Mitchell v. Chester Housing Authority†	389 Pa. 314	60
1957	Auel v. White†	389 Pa. 208	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 268 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 Thomas McKeen Chidsey on?: Thomas McKeen Chidsey 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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7 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).