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 1856 / Served to 1865

Samuel Ames

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Samuel Ames was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1856. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1806–1865
Tenure: 1856–1865 · 9 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1856	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Ames authored 212 published opinions for the court (1856–1867), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: G. & D. Taylor & Co. v. R. G. & J. T. Place (51 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. 3 of these were attributed to Ames 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
1856	G. & D. Taylor & Co. v. R. G. & J. T. Place	4 R.I. 324	51
1856	Ditson v. Ditson	4 R.I. 87	16
1857	State v. Brown	5 R.I. 1	12
1858	Diman v. the Providence, Warren, and Bristol R.R. Company	5 R.I. 130	9
1856	In the Matter of Dorrance-Street	4 R.I. 230	9
1864	In the Matter of Joseph B. Nichols	8 R.I. 50	7
1861	Greene v. Creighton	7 R.I. 1	7
1858	State v. Keeran	5 R.I. 497	6
1856	Foster v. Browning	4 R.I. 47	5
1858	Nichols v. Baxter Others	5 R.I. 491	4
1858	Atlantic Fire & Marine Insurance v. Wilson, Gall & Co.	5 R.I. 479	4
1857	Spencer Others v. Pierce Others	5 R.I. 63	4
1856	Tillinghast, Receiver v. Champlin Others	4 R.I. 173	4
1863	Rounds v. Humes	7 R.I. 535	3
1860	Allen v. Brown Another	6 R.I. 386	3

Showing the 15 most-cited of 213 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 Samuel Ames on?: Samuel Ames 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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9 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).