At the beginning of 2019, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht issued an opinion in the closely watched case Gallagher v. Geico in which he decried what he saw as the court “upending … well-established precedent” and supplanting its own judgment over that of the legislature.

It was not the only time the justice sparred with the other members of the court about their perceived departures from precedent, and in late October, he distanced himself again from the court’s ruling in another high-profile case—this time in Yanakos v. UPMC—saying that the majority’s standard for reviewing the issue was “contrary to our precedent” and “encroach[ed]” on the legislature.