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 2001 / Served to 2008

Frank Williams

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Frank Williams was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 2001. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 2001–2008 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2001	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Boston University
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Williams authored 146 published opinions for the court (2001–2009), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Arnold v. Rhode Island Department of Labor (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. 89 of these were attributed to Williams 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
2003	Arnold v. Rhode Island Department of Labor	822 A.2d 164	87
2004	State v. Grayhurst	852 A.2d 491	83
2008	State v. Lead Industries, Ass'n, Inc.†	951 A.2d 428	77
2003	Filippi v. Filippi	818 A.2d 608	77
2003	Zarrella v. Minnesota Mutual Life Insurance Co.	824 A.2d 1249	75
2005	Kaveny v. Town of Cumberland Zoning Board of Review	875 A.2d 1	73
2005	Gem Plumbing & Heating Co., Inc. v. Rossi	867 A.2d 796	64
2003	Martone v. Johnston School Committee	824 A.2d 426	61
2006	Smiler v. Napolitano†	911 A.2d 1035	54
2001	State v. Oliveira	774 A.2d 893	54
2007	Lavoie v. North East Knitting, Inc.†	918 A.2d 225	51
2003	Interstate Navigation Co. v. Division of Public Utilities & Carriers of the State	824 A.2d 1282	50
2005	State v. Mohapatra	880 A.2d 802	49
2004	Chavers v. Fleet Bank (RI), N.A.	844 A.2d 666	48
2008	City of Cranston v. Rhode Island Laborers' District Council†	960 A.2d 529	46

Showing the 15 most-cited of 147 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 Frank Williams on?: Frank Williams 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

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

7 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).