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 1978 / Served to 2001

Joseph Robert Weisberger

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Joseph Robert Weisberger was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1920–2012
Tenure: 1978–2001 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Weisberger authored 689 published opinions for the court (1978–2003), plus 11 dissents and 12 concurrences. Most cited: Milardo v. Coastal Resources Management Council (325 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. 194 of these were attributed to Weisberger 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	Milardo v. Coastal Resources Management Council	434 A.2d 266	325
1992	Barrington School Committee v. Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board	608 A.2d 1126	194
1992	Palmisciano v. Burrillville Racing Ass'n	603 A.2d 317	143
1980	Ludwig v. Kowal	419 A.2d 297	131
1980	Toohey v. Kilday	415 A.2d 732	126
1987	State v. Burke	522 A.2d 725	123
1996	Kaya v. Partington†	681 A.2d 256	113
1987	State v. Caruolo	524 A.2d 575	112
1997	Pontbriand v. Sundlun†	699 A.2d 856	99
1979	Industrial National Bank v. Peloso	397 A.2d 1312	99
1978	Jacinto v. Egan· Dissent†	391 A.2d 1173	99
1992	Haley v. Town of Lincoln	611 A.2d 845	92
1980	Lennon v. MacGregor	423 A.2d 820	91
1979	State v. Cline	405 A.2d 1192	84
1999	Capital Properties, Inc. v. State	749 A.2d 1069	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 712 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 Robert Weisberger on?: Joseph Robert Weisberger 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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23 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).