Coal miner's daughter becomes Pa. Supreme Court justice, 2nd woman on highest bench

The daughter of a coal miner was sworn in to a seat on Pennsylvania's highest court by the daughter of a steelworker inside Pittsburgh's Duquesne Club on Friday, then called upon her political supporters to elevate more women and minorities to the bench.

Justice Christine Donohue, last of the three new Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices to be sworn in, had her oath of office administered by Justice Debra Todd, the steelworker's daughter who said she'd grown accustomed to being the only woman on the bench.

“For a long time, when someone in the street yelled out, ‘Madam Justice! Madam Justice!' I knew they were talking to me. Now, I won't know,” said Todd, a former Superior Court judge and resident of Cranberry. “It is wonderful to have a sister on the court.”

After Todd swore her in, Donohue, of Point Breeze said she hopes the elected Pennsylvania judiciary will someday become more diverse at all levels.

“The political parties of Pennsylvania have an obligation to endorse and support women and people of color so that this bench, and all benches of justice in this commonwealth, reflect the population of this commonwealth,” she said.

According to the Pennsylvania Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession, women made up two-thirds of the Superior Court and 28 percent of the Common Pleas judges statewide in 2011, the most recent year the commission collected data. Philadelphia had 42 women on its Court of Common Pleas that year, making up nearly half the bench; and Allegheny County had 13, or 31 percent; but 28 other counties had no female Common Pleas judges at all.

Neither the Bar Association nor the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts kept numbers on minority members of the bench.

The daughter of a coal miner and a seamstress who grew up in Schuylkill and Carbon counties, Donohue attended law school at Duquesne and was a trial lawyer in Allegheny County for 27 years before she successfully ran for Superior Court in 2007.

“I am a better judge for having toiled alongside Christine Donohue,” said Superior Court Judge Mary Jane Bowes, who praised Donohue's intelligence and work ethic in the way she would read every brief and absorb the important facts and arguments, and the way she challenged her fellow judges' assumptions and conclusions.

Donohue and her Democratic ticket-mates Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht swept the three open seats on the Supreme Court in November's election, marked by their promise to get away from the scandals that had embroiled the court and created several of the openings. Her ticket-mates were sworn in earlier this week in Philadelphia and at Duquesne University, respectively.

Donohue noted the time she had spent as an attorney on the Disciplinary Board of Pennsylvania, the panel that reviews ethics complaints against attorneys, and as a judge on the Pennsylvania Court of Judicial Discipline, which hears complaints against judges.

“Following those rules of ethics elevated the legal profession to the pinnacle of other professions,” she said. “That is one thing I will forever focus on: I will follow those rules and act with integrity, because the people of the commonwealth deserve that at least.”

Matthew Santoni is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412 391 0927 or msantoni@tribweb.com.