On Oct. 1, 2014, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court issued an opinion declaring the justices' power to suspend judges. Just hours later, former Justice Seamus P. McCaffery's name first surfaced in the pornographic and offensive email scandal that has gone on to involve current Justice J. Michael Eakin, contributing to McCaffery's departure from the court and touching off two Supreme Court inquiries, two reviews by the Judicial Conduct Board and now an investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.

The decision in In re Magisterial District Judge Bruno, some court observers have said, upended the 1993 constitutional amendment that created and gave disciplinary authority to the Court of Judicial Discipline. The ensuing events have created some confusion about judicial discipline in Pennsylvania and have opened the question of how the court's three incoming justices will approach the issue, observers said.

“[Bruno] was a specific assertion that the hierarchy of judicial discipline would run to the state Supreme Court at the top, and that is absolutely counter to the whole thrust of the amendment,” Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University School of Law professor, said.