King’s Bench Power and  
Power of Extraordinary Jurisdiction

Can the Supreme Court hear any case it chooses?

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has the power to consider any case pending in a lower court and even 
some matters not pending in the courts when it sees the need to address an issue of “immediate public 
importance.”

When it does so, the Supreme Court exercises its “King’s Bench power” or its power of “extraordinary 
jurisdiction” as provided by the Pennsylvania Constitution and Pennsylvania law.

Although King’s Bench power, which is based on English common law, is similar in many respects to 
extraordinary jurisdiction, the two powers are not identical. Extraordinary jurisdiction enables the Supreme 
Court to assume jurisdiction of any matter pending before a lower court at any stage. King’s Bench power 
may be exercised when no matter is pending – for example, if an issue of importance arises in connection 
with the Supreme Court’s administrative authority over the lower courts. It also gives the Supreme Court 
the authority to supervise and administer the judiciary. 

The Supreme Court exercises these powers only on rare occasions. It has exercised them to take 
jurisdiction of cases such as those involving election disputes, public employee strikes, prison 
overcrowding, investigating grand juries, powers of the Legislature and alleged judicial misconduct.

Revised October 2013



(Untitled)

This info page is part of the LIT Lab's Form Explorer project. It is not associated with the Pennsylvania state courts. To learn more about the project, check out our about page.

Downloads: You can download both the original form (last checked 2023-03) and the machine-processed form with normalized data fields.

---

About This Form:

• Sourced from www.pacourts.us (2023-03)
• Page(s): 1
• Fields(s): 7
• Average fields per page: 7
• Reading Level: Grade 14
• LIST Grouping(s): CO-00-00-00-00, CO-07-00-00-00.

Use our Rate My PDF tool to learn more. Go beyond the above insights and learn more about this or any pdf form at RateMyPDF.com, includes: counts of difficult words used, passive voice decetion, and suggestions for how to make the form more usable.

---

Identified Data Fields:

We have done our best to automaticly identify and name form fields according to our naming conventions. When possible, we've used names tied to our question library. See e.g., user1_name. If we think we've found a match to a question in our library, it is highlighted in green. Novel names are auto generated. So, you will probably need to edit some of them if you're trying to stick to the convention.

---

Create an Interactive Version of this Form:

The Weaver creates a draft guided interview from a template form, like the one provided here. You can use the link below to open this form in the Weaver. To learn more, read "Weaving" your form into a draft interview.