How do judges of the Rhode Island Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.

Rhode Island Supreme Court / Joined 1891 / Served to 1900

Charles Matteson

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Charles Matteson was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1891. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1840–1925
Tenure: 1891–1900 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1891	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Matteson authored 360 published opinions for the court (1875–1901), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: MacAuley Brothers v. Tierney (36 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 10 of these were attributed to Matteson by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1895	MacAuley Brothers v. Tierney	33 A. 1	36
1892	Greene v. O'Connor	25 A. 692	29
1886	Greene v. Wilbur	3 A. 4	23
1888	Baldwin v. Emerson	15 A. 83	22
1898	John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance v. White	40 A. 5	18
1897	Booth v. National India Rubber Co.	36 A. 714	17
1889	Mahogany v. Ward	17 A. 860	16
1895	Myron v. Union Railroad Co.	32 A. 165	15
1890	O'Donnell v. Penney	20 A. 305	15
1885	Johnson v. Johnson	23 A. 106	15
1890	Barrett v. Dodge	19 A. 530	14
1888	National Eagle Bank v. Hunt	13 A. 115	14
1887	Donahue v. Shippee	8 A. 541	14
1899	Barber v. Westcott	43 A. 844	13
1894	Wilson v. N.Y., N.H. H.R.R. Co.	29 A. 300	12

Showing the 15 most-cited of 364 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Rhode Island Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is gubernatorial appointment.
Which court was Charles Matteson on?: Charles Matteson was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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9 years on the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).