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 1921 / Served to 1943

William I. Schaffer

Justice, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

William I. Schaffer was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, who joined the court in 1921. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1867–1953
Tenure: 1921–1943 · 22 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1921	Supreme Court of Pennsylvania	–	–

Education

Lafayette College
University of Pennsylvania

Judicial Record

In our data, Schaffer authored 911 published opinions for the court (1921–1942), plus 25 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Nanty-Glo Boro. v. American Surety Co. (466 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. 146 of these were attributed to Schaffer 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
1932	Nanty-Glo Boro. v. American Surety Co.· Dissent	163 A. 523	466
1924	Gianni v. Russell Co., Inc.	126 A. 791	441
1932	Dorrance's Estate· Dissent	163 A. 303	136
1938	Adamchick v. Wyoming Valley Collieries Co.	3 A.2d 377	96
1928	Goldman v. Mitchell-Fletcher Co.	141 A. 231	92
1939	Hodgson v. Bigelow· Dissent	7 A.2d 338	91
1932	Commonwealth v. Trunk	167 A. 333	87
1936	Commonwealth Ex Rel. Minerd v. Margiotti	188 A. 524	80
1930	Rosenzweig v. Heller	153 A. 346	79
1927	Hartig v. American Ice Co.· Dissent	137 A. 867	78
1941	Cochrane's Estate	20 A.2d 305	72
1925	Bank of Hooversville v. Sagerson	129 A. 333	72
1931	Finley v. Glenn Et Ux.	154 A. 299	65
1932	Commonwealth v. Simpson	165 A. 498	64
1927	Commonwealth v. Mayberry†	138 A. 686	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 941 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 William I. Schaffer on?: William I. Schaffer was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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22 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).