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 1900 / Served to 1904

John Stiness

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

John Stiness was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1900. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1840–1913
Tenure: 1900–1904 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1900	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stiness authored 419 published opinions for the court (1875–1906), plus 5 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Chase v. Chase (83 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 Stiness 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
1897	Chase v. Chase	37 A. 804	83
1893	Slater v. the Oriental Mills	27 A. 443	30
1899	Adams v. Union Railroad Co.	42 A. 515	29
1894	Beehler v. Daniels, Cornell & Co.	29 A. 6	28
1901	McCaffrey v. Mossberg & Granville Mfg. Co.	50 A. 651	27
1904	State v. Nargashian	58 A. 953	25
1886	In Re the Liquors of George W. Hoxsie & Co.	3 A. 1	25
1886	State v. Duggan	6 A. 787	23
1889	Olney v. Conanicut Land Co.	18 A. 181	22
1897	City of Pawtucket v. A.F. F. Bray	37 A. 1	21
1896	Hartwell v. Tefft	35 A. 882	21
1893	Hackett v. Hackett	26 A. 42	19
1887	State Ex Rel. Metcalf v. Goff	9 A. 226	19
1902	O'Rourke v. John Hancock Mut. Life Ins. Co.	50 A. 834	18
1900	Hull v. H. A. Johnson & Co.	46 A. 182	17

Showing the 15 most-cited of 429 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 Stiness on?: John Stiness 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.

4 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).