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 1995 / Served to 2002

John Paul Bourcier

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

John Paul Bourcier was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1995. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1927–2002
Tenure: 1995–2002 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1995	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Vanderbilt University

Judicial Record

In our data, Bourcier authored 135 published opinions for the court (1995–2002), plus 3 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Bettencourt (89 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. 59 of these were attributed to Bourcier 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
1999	State v. Bettencourt†	723 A.2d 1101	89
1997	Vallinoto v. DiSandro	688 A.2d 830	77
1996	Eigabri v. Lekas	681 A.2d 271	69
1996	State v. Bryant· Concurrence†	670 A.2d 776	67
2000	Rubano v. DiCenzo· Concurrence†	759 A.2d 959	62
1996	Splendorio v. Bilray Demolition Co., Inc.†	682 A.2d 461	61
2001	Heflin v. Koszela	774 A.2d 25	59
1996	Kelly v. Marcantonio	678 A.2d 873	55
2000	Graff v. Motta	748 A.2d 249	53
1998	State v. Humphrey†	715 A.2d 1265	48
1996	State v. LaRoche	683 A.2d 989	48
2000	Hendrick v. Hendrick	755 A.2d 784	47
1997	Fund for Community Progress v. United Way of Southeastern New England†	695 A.2d 517	47
2001	Martinelli v. Hopkins	787 A.2d 1158	46
1998	Kurczy v. St. Joseph Veterans Ass'n, Inc.†	713 A.2d 766	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 141 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 John Paul Bourcier on?: John Paul Bourcier 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).