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 1948 / Served to 1956

Jeremiah Edward O'Connell

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Jeremiah Edward O'Connell was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1948. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1883–1964
Tenure: 1948–1956 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1948	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Boston University
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Connell authored 104 published opinions for the court (1948–1956), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Lichtenstein v. Parness (39 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. 106 of these were attributed to O'Connell 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
1953	Lichtenstein v. Parness†	99 A.2d 3	39
1948	State v. Cairo†	60 A.2d 841	25
1948	State v. Greene†	60 A.2d 711	18
1949	Union Trust Co. v. Watson†	68 A.2d 916	17
1949	Massasoit Housing Corp. v. Town of North Kingstown†	65 A.2d 38	13
1952	Sparne v. Altshuler†	90 A.2d 919	12
1954	Irish v. Collins†	107 A.2d 455	10
1950	Vingi v. Trillo†	73 A.2d 43	10
1949	Morrison v. Lamarre†	65 A.2d 217	10
1948	St. Lawrence v. Reed†	60 A.2d 734	10
1954	Beauregard v. Town Council†	107 A.2d 283	9
1951	Matteson v. Zoning Board of Review†	84 A.2d 611	9
1951	Romano v. Caldarone†	79 A.2d 763	9
1954	Coffin v. Short†	106 A.2d 262	8
1951	Powers Ex Rel. Department of Employment Security v. Superior Court†	82 A.2d 885	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 106 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 Jeremiah Edward O'Connell on?: Jeremiah Edward O'Connell 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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8 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).