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 1986 / Served to 1993

Thomas Frederic Fay

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Thomas Frederic Fay was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1940 · age 86
Tenure: 1986–1993 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Providence College
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Fay authored 213 published opinions for the court (1986–1993), plus 2 dissents. Most cited: Brennan v. Kirby (159 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. 46 of these were attributed to Fay 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
1987	Brennan v. Kirby	529 A.2d 633	159
1993	Environmental Scientific Corp. v. Durfee	621 A.2d 200	153
1987	Lawrence v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc.	523 A.2d 864	87
1989	In Re Kristen B.	558 A.2d 200	85
1988	Donna Reilly v. United States· Dissent†	547 A.2d 894	70
1989	R.J.E.P. Associates v. Hellewell	560 A.2d 353	64
1989	State v. Dame	560 A.2d 330	63
1990	State v. Grundy	582 A.2d 1166	55
1986	State v. Wyche	518 A.2d 907	55
1992	Town of East Greenwich v. O'NEIL	617 A.2d 104	53
1987	State v. Brown	528 A.2d 1098	53
1990	Mullins v. Federal Dairy Co.†	568 A.2d 759	52
1993	Rodrigues v. Miriam Hospital	623 A.2d 456	51
1989	Rhode Island Affiliate, American Civil Liberties Union, Inc. v. Bernasconi†	557 A.2d 1232	49
1990	Gilbane Co. v. Poulas	576 A.2d 1195	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 215 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 Frederic Fay on?: Thomas Frederic Fay 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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7 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).