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 1833 / Served to 1847

Job Durfee

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Job Durfee was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1833. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1790–1847
Tenure: 1833–1847 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1833	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Durfee authored 17 published opinions for the court (1834–1847). Most cited: State v. Joel Fletcher (3 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. 2 of these were attributed to Durfee 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
1846	State v. Joel Fletcher	1 R.I. 193	3
1837	Lemuel H. Arnold v. Sarah B. Ruggles	1 R.I. 165	2
1845	Harriet Battey v. William Battey†	1 R.I. 212	1
1844	State v. John Gordon	1 R.I. 179	1
1842	J.M. Daniels v. David Mowry	1 R.I. 151	1
1837	Rathbone v. Terry	1 R.I. 73	1
1847	Turner Salisbury v. Ross	1 R.I. 88	0
1846	State v. Benjamin P. Wilbor	1 R.I. 199	0
1846	Phinney Martin v. Stafford Mann, Town Treasurer	1 R.I. 205	0
1840	James W. Sweet v. Jenkins Man	1 R.I. 147	0
1840	Amos H. M'crillis v. Robert C. Sisson	1 R.I. 143	0
1838	Reed v. Johnson	1 R.I. 81	0
1838	Indictment, State v. Abner Peckham	3 R.I. 289	0
1838	Ansel Churchill v. Allen Monroe†	1 R.I. 209	0
1835	Mowry Et Ux. v. Staples	1 R.I. 10	0

Showing the 15 most-cited of 17 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 Job Durfee on?: Job Durfee 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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14 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).