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 1976 / Served to 1986

Joseph A. Bevilacqua

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Joseph A. Bevilacqua was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1918–1989
Tenure: 1976–1986 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Providence College
Georgetown University

Judicial Record

In our data, Bevilacqua authored 364 published opinions for the court (1976–1986), plus 13 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Caswell v. George Sherman Sand & Gravel Co. (537 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. 72 of these were attributed to Bevilacqua 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
1981	Caswell v. George Sherman Sand & Gravel Co.	424 A.2d 646	537
1978	Apostolou v. Genovesi	388 A.2d 821	400
1979	Destefano v. Zoning Board of Review†	122 R.I. 241	230
1980	Berberian v. Department of Employment Security, Board of Review	414 A.2d 480	178
1981	Steinberg v. State	427 A.2d 338	154
1977	Narragansett Wire Co. v. Norberg	376 A.2d 1	148
1977	Town of Narragansett v. International Ass'n of Fire Fighters	380 A.2d 521	103
1980	Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. v. Dial Media, Inc.	410 A.2d 986	92
1981	Mongony v. Bevilacqua	432 A.2d 661	89
1983	Malo v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co.	459 A.2d 954	82
1980	State v. Anthony	422 A.2d 921	81
1979	Little v. Conflict of Interest Commission	397 A.2d 884	80
1984	State v. Von Bulow· Concurrence†	475 A.2d 995	77
1980	Morris v. D'AMARIO	416 A.2d 137	76
1983	Lerner v. Gill· Dissent†	463 A.2d 1352	72

Showing the 15 most-cited of 379 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 Joseph A. Bevilacqua on?: Joseph A. Bevilacqua 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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10 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).