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 1979 / Served to 1996

Florence Kerins Murray

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Florence Kerins Murray was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–2004
Tenure: 1979–1996 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Murray authored 531 published opinions for the court (1980–1996), plus 17 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: Sartor v. Coastal Resources Management Council (87 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. 130 of these were attributed to Murray 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
1988	Sartor v. Coastal Resources Management Council	542 A.2d 1077	87
1980	State v. Feng	421 A.2d 1258	86
1995	State v. Tempest	651 A.2d 1198	80
1994	Clark-Fitzpatrick, Inc./Franki Foundation Co. v. Gill	652 A.2d 440	79
1994	State v. Toole	640 A.2d 965	77
1984	State v. Von Bulow	475 A.2d 995	77
1989	Smith v. Boyd	553 A.2d 131	76
1994	E.W. Audet & Sons, Inc. v. Fireman's Fund Insurace Co. of Newark	635 A.2d 1181	75
1993	Palmisano v. Toth	624 A.2d 314	74
1980	Ryan v. State, Department of Transportation	420 A.2d 841	73
1991	State v. Chase	588 A.2d 120	72
1984	Kennedy v. Cumberland Engineering Co., Inc.· Dissent†	471 A.2d 195	71
1989	State v. Henshaw	557 A.2d 1204	69
1987	Gara Realty, Inc. v. Zoning Board of Review	523 A.2d 855	69
1986	State v. Gordon	508 A.2d 1339	68

Showing the 15 most-cited of 557 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 Florence Kerins Murray on?: Florence Kerins Murray 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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17 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).