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 2003 / Active

Paul Suttell

Chief Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Paul Suttell is a Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, serving since 2003. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1949 · age 77
Tenure: Since 2003 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2003	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Northwestern University
Suffolk University

Judicial Record

In our data, Suttell authored 332 published opinions for the court (2003–2019), plus 4 dissents and 9 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Bido (119 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. 323 of these were attributed to Suttell 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
2008	State v. Bido†	941 A.2d 822	119
2004	State v. Lynch	854 A.2d 1022	102
2005	Tanner v. Town Council of Town of East Greenwich	880 A.2d 784	100
2005	State v. Hallenbeck	878 A.2d 992	78
2004	Foster-Glocester Regional School Committee v. Board of Review	854 A.2d 1008	78
2004	State v. Gomez	848 A.2d 221	73
2006	Narragansett Electric Co. v. Carbone†	898 A.2d 87	70
2005	State v. Oliveira	882 A.2d 1097	58
2008	Notarantonio v. Notarantonio†	941 A.2d 138	57
2005	McKenna v. Williams· Concurrence†	874 A.2d 217	56
2010	Berman v. Sitrin· Concurrence†	991 A.2d 1038	55
2004	Keystone Elevator Co. v. Johnson & Wales University	850 A.2d 912	52
2009	State v. Gaspar†	982 A.2d 140	50
2007	Moore v. Ballard†	914 A.2d 487	47
2005	State v. Linde	876 A.2d 1115	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 345 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 is Paul Suttell on?: Paul Suttell is a Chief 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.

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).