Susan Peikes Gantman elected to five-year term as Superior Court president judge

After a brief stint as interim president judge of Pennsylvania’s Superior Court, John T.

Bender is out, and fellow appeals jurist Susan Peikes Gantman is in, with the latter taking the helm at one of the state’s intermediate appellate benches.

The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts on Tuesday announced that the Superior Court, meeting in Pittsburgh on that day, had chosen Judge Susan Peikes Gantman to be its new president judge.

Gantman, who hails from Montgomery County in the Greater Philadelphia region, is a graduate of the Villanova University School of Law.

She was elected to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in 2003 and won a retention vote last year, according to her biography.

Before being elected to the appellate bench, Gantman spent more than two decades in the private practice of law.

Gantman served as a senior member and co-chair of the Family Law Section of the Philadelphia law firm Cozen O’Connor and as a partner in the former law firm of Sherr Joffee & Zuckerman.

She also previously represented the Montgomery County Office of Children and Youth and she was a former Montgomery County assistant district attorney, her bio shows.

Gantman’s only prior judicial experience was when she served as a law clerk to a Montgomery County Common Pleas Court judge.

Gantman, who will go on to serve as the president judge of Superior Court for a five-year term, has been the recipient of various service award during her career, including the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession Anne X. Alpern Award, the Montgomery County Bar Association’s Margaret Richardson Award, and the Montgomery County Office of Children and Youth’s Outstanding Service Award, according to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts.

The judge is active with the Pennsylvania, Montgomery County and Philadelphia Bar Associations, she lectures for the Pennsylvania Conference of State Trial Judges and the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and she is a member of the Pennsylvania Dependence Benchbook Committee.

The Superior Court hears most criminal and civil appeals from the state’s Courts of Common Pleas.