Totalitarian Pennsylvania Update.

Another money-grabbing, power-mad jurist bites the dust, kiddies. Keep the pressure on, Keystone Staters.

The News Journal: First woman elected to PA Supreme Court is resigning

HARRISBURG — Justice Sandra Schultz Newman, who narrowly won a new term on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year despite voter backlash over judicial pay raises that doomed a colleague, said today she will step down at the end of this year.

Newman, the first woman elected to Pennsylvania’s highest court, said she plans to head the appellate-practice group at the Philadelphia-based Cozen O’Connor law firm, as well as a dispute-resolution unit that she intends to create. Her brother is a partner in the firm.

Newman, 68, would have been forced to leave the bench in about two years, when she reaches the mandatory retirement age.

She said she will miss the collegiality on the state’s highest court and the challenge of settling important questions of law.

“It was time to move on to a new endeavor,” she said in a telephone interview.

Gov. "Slow Eddie" Rendell is expected to nominate an interim successor for Newman within 90 days. The seat will become open for a 10-year term in the 2007 election, said Thomas B. Darr, the state’s deputy court administrator.