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 1966 / Served to 1992

Thomas F. Kelleher

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Thomas F. Kelleher was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1966. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1923–1995
Tenure: 1966–1992 · 26 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1966	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Kelleher authored 926 published opinions for the court (1966–1992), plus 29 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Costa v. Registrar of Motor Vehicles (255 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. 193 of these were attributed to Kelleher 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
1988	Costa v. Registrar of Motor Vehicles	543 A.2d 1307	255
1984	Newport Shipyard, Inc. v. Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights	484 A.2d 893	238
1986	Carmody v. Rhode Island Conflict of Interest Commission· Concurrence†	509 A.2d 453	230
1991	Salve Regina College v. Zoning Board of Review	594 A.2d 878	182
1972	Wilkinson v. Vesey	295 A.2d 676	179
1968	Wilkinson v. Harrington	243 A.2d 745	154
1968	EMPLOYERS'FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY v. Beals	240 A.2d 397	138
1971	Pickering v. American Employers Insurance	282 A.2d 584	131
1987	Banks v. Bowen's Landing Corp.	522 A.2d 1222	121
1980	Bibeault v. Hanover Insurance	417 A.2d 313	119
1978	State v. Jalette	382 A.2d 526	119
1975	Mariorenzi v. Joseph DiPonte, Inc.	333 A.2d 127	117
1973	Smith Development Corp. v. Bilow Enterprises, Inc.	308 A.2d 477	108
1978	Jacinto v. Egan	391 A.2d 1173	99
1974	Rhode Island Ophthalmological Society v. Cannon	317 A.2d 124	98

Showing the 15 most-cited of 969 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 F. Kelleher on?: Thomas F. Kelleher 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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26 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).