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 1955 / Served to 1976

Thomas H. Roberts

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

Thomas H. Roberts was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1955. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1892–1976
Tenure: 1955–1976 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1955	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Fordham University
Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Roberts authored 622 published opinions for the court (1956–1982), plus 16 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Becker v. Beaudoin (102 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. 141 of these were attributed to Roberts 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
1970	Becker v. Beaudoin	261 A.2d 896	102
1973	State v. Patriarca	308 A.2d 300	96
1969	Aldcroft v. Fidelity & Casualty Co.	259 A.2d 408	84
1971	Ritter v. Narragansett Electric Company	283 A.2d 255	83
1962	Monforte v. Zoning Bd. of Review of East Providence	176 A.2d 726	81
1968	Westminster Corp. v. Zoning Board of Review	238 A.2d 353	71
1969	City of Warwick v. Warwick Regular Firemen's Ass'n.	256 A.2d 206	63
1964	Labbe v. Hill Brothers, Inc.	197 A.2d 305	55
1972	State v. Ouimette	298 A.2d 124	54
1982	Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce v. Public Utilities Commission	452 A.2d 931	52
1962	Mello v. Board of Review of Newport	177 A.2d 533	50
1973	State v. Lerner	308 A.2d 324	49
1970	Ferrelli v. Department of Employment Security	261 A.2d 906	47
1965	Shalvey v. Zoning Board of Warwick	210 A.2d 589	47
1963	Sherman v. Goloskie	188 A.2d 79	47

Showing the 15 most-cited of 649 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 H. Roberts on?: Thomas H. Roberts 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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21 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).