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 1956 / Served to 1987

Thomas Joseph Paolino

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Thomas Joseph Paolino was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1956. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1905–1987
Tenure: 1956–1987 · 31 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1956	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Paolino authored 662 published opinions for the court (1956–1978), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Belanger v. Matteson (94 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. 135 of these were attributed to Paolino 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
1975	Belanger v. Matteson· Concurrence†	346 A.2d 124	94
1974	Lemoine v. Department of Mental Health, Retardation & Hospitals†	113 R.I. 285	89
1967	Hopf v. Board of Review of City of Newport	230 A.2d 420	86
1978	Presley v. Newport Hospital	365 A.2d 748	80
1976	O'CONNOR v. McKanna	359 A.2d 350	71
1970	Factory Mutual Liability Ins. Co. of Amer. v. Cooper	262 A.2d 370	63
1977	East Greenwich Yacht Club v. Coastal Resources Management Council	376 A.2d 682	58
1976	New England Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. Public Utilities Commission	358 A.2d 1	52
1976	Roberts v. Kettelle	356 A.2d 207	48
1969	Handy v. Geary	252 A.2d 435	48
1975	Berberian v. Travisono	332 A.2d 121	45
1977	Narragansett Electric Co. v. Harsch	368 A.2d 1194	44
1978	Employers' Fire Insurance v. Baker	383 A.2d 1005	43
1969	Bailey v. West	249 A.2d 414	42
1975	State v. Fortes	330 A.2d 404	41

Showing the 15 most-cited of 666 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 Joseph Paolino on?: Thomas Joseph Paolino 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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31 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).