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 1998 / Former Justice

Thomas G. Saylor

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Thomas G. Saylor was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 1998 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Columbia University in the City of New York
University of Virginia-Main Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Saylor authored 493 published opinions for the court (1998–2022), plus 280 dissents and 469 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Walker, T. (1,340 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. 1,145 of these were attributed to Saylor 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
2018	Commonwealth, Aplt. v. Walker, T.†	185 A.3d 969	1,340
2007	Commonwealth v. Bennett· Dissent†	930 A.2d 1264	1,230
2002	Commonwealth v. Grant· Concurrence†	813 A.2d 726	1,205
2010	In the Interest of R.J.T.· Concurrence†	9 A.3d 1179	967
2017	Commonwealth v. Muniz, J., Aplt.· Dissent†	164 A.3d 1189	899
2014	Commonwealth v. Fears· Dissent†	86 A.3d 795	803
2011	Commonwealth v. Spotz· Concurrence†	18 A.3d 244	764
2013	Commonwealth v. Holmes· Concurrence†	79 A.3d 562	731
2005	Commonwealth v. Castillo· Dissent†	888 A.2d 775	725
2009	Commonwealth v. Johnson· Concurrence†	985 A.2d 915	642
2015	Commonwealth v. Treiber, S., Aplt· Dissent†	121 A.3d 435	629
2015	Commonwealth v. Mason, L., Aplt· Concurrence†	130 A.3d 601	619
2007	Commonwealth v. Washington· Dissent†	927 A.2d 586	593
2012	Commonwealth v. Koehler· Concurrence†	36 A.3d 121	580
1999	Madison Construction Co. v. Harleysville Mutual Insurance†	735 A.2d 100	547

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,242 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 G. Saylor on?: Thomas G. Saylor 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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28 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).