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 1875 / Served to 1891

Thomas Durfee

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Thomas Durfee was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1875. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1826–1901
Tenure: 1875–1891 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1875	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Durfee authored 556 published opinions for the court (1874–1891), plus 1 concurrence. Most cited: Hill v. Bain (29 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.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1885	Hill v. Bain	23 A. 44	29
1879	Glavin v. Rhode Island Hospital	12 R.I. 411	23
1891	Almy v. Jones	21 A. 616	19
1890	Kenyon v. Cameron	20 A. 233	15
1891	Child v. Bemus	21 A. 539	14
1888	French v. Parker	14 A. 870	14
1887	Chapin v. Brown	10 A. 639	14
1887	Allen v. Danielson	8 A. 705	14
1886	Peckham v. Newton	4 A. 758	14
1889	O'Reilly v. N.Y. N.E.R.R. Co.· Separate	17 A. 171	13
1887	Joyce v. Martin	10 A. 620	13
1889	Wood v. Hammond· Separate	17 A. 324	12
1887	Lewis v. Town of North Kingstown	11 A. 173	12
1889	State v. the District of Narragansett	16 A. 901	11
1886	Sayles v. Bates	5 A. 497	11

Showing the 15 most-cited of 564 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 Thomas Durfee on?: Thomas Durfee was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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16 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).