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 1958 / Served to 1959

Thomas D. McBride

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Thomas D. McBride was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1902 · age 124
Tenure: 1958–1959 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McBride authored 36 published opinions for the court (1959), plus 8 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Smith v. Bell Telephone Co. (362 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. 46 of these were attributed to McBride 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
1959	Smith v. Bell Telephone Co.†	397 Pa. 134	362
1959	Ayers v. Morgan· Concurrence†	397 Pa. 282	281
1959	Cadwallader v. New Amsterdam Casualty Co.†	396 Pa. 582	212
1959	Rosche v. McCoy†	397 Pa. 615	173
1959	Commonwealth v. Koczwara· Dissent†	397 Pa. 575	173
1959	Hilbert v. Roth†	395 Pa. 270	142
1959	Commonwealth v. Moore· Dissent†	398 Pa. 198	112
1959	Commonwealth v. Glover†	397 Pa. 543	83
1959	Yorston v. Pennell†	397 Pa. 28	61
1959	Lear v. Shirk's Motor Express Corp.†	397 Pa. 144	55
1959	Craig v. W. J. Thiele & Sons, Inc.†	395 Pa. 129	47
1959	Highmont Music Corp. v. J. M. Hoffmann Co.†	397 Pa. 345	46
1959	Jemison v. Pfeifer†	397 Pa. 81	36
1959	Reid v. Brodsky· Dissent†	397 Pa. 463	35
1959	Commonwealth v. Garrison· Dissent†	398 Pa. 47	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 46 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 D. McBride on?: Thomas D. McBride 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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1 year 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).