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 1913 / Served to 1917

Clarke Johnson

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Clarke Johnson was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1913. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1851–1930
Tenure: 1913–1917 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1913	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Johnson authored 110 published opinions for the court (1903–1917), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Chobanian v. Washburn Wire Company (21 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. 1 of these was attributed to Johnson 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
1911	Chobanian v. Washburn Wire Company	80 A. 394	21
1916	Sheffield v. Cooke	98 A. 161	15
1910	Hickey v. McCabe Bihler	75 A. 404	15
1911	Clark v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. R.	80 A. 406	13
1906	Olney, for an Opinion	63 A. 956	13
1916	Batcheller-Durkee v. Batcheller	97 A. 378	12
1906	Grady v. Home Fire and Marine Ins. Co.	63 A. 173	11
1912	Rhode Island Hospital Trust Co. v. Dunnell	83 A. 858	10
1910	Phillips v. the Rhode Island Co.	78 A. 342	10
1908	Adams v. Lorraine Manufacturing Co.	71 A. 180	10
1907	Selleck v. Thompson	67 A. 425	10
1915	Depaola v. Nat. Ins. Co., Humboldt Ins. Co.	94 A. 700	9
1908	McKenna v. McKenna	69 A. 844	9
1907	Guild v. Allen	67 A. 855	9
1913	Blomen, Frederickson v. N. Barstow Co.	85 A. 924	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 112 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 Clarke Johnson on?: Clarke Johnson was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Sources

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

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4 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).