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 1935 / Served to 1948

William Washburn Moss

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

William Washburn Moss was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1935. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1872–1949
Tenure: 1935–1948 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1935	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Brown University
Harvard University

Judicial Record

In our data, Moss authored 220 published opinions for the court (1935–1947), plus 22 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Gorham v. Robinson (54 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. 2 of these were attributed to Moss 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
1936	Gorham v. Robinson	186 A. 832	54
1936	State v. Smith· Concurrence	184 A. 494	24
1936	Rose v. Standard Oil Co. of New York, Inc.	185 A. 251	18
1939	Moretti v. Division of Intoxicating Beverages· Dissent	5 A.2d 288	17
1937	Main Realty Co. v. Blackstone Valley Gas & Electric Co.· Dissent	193 A. 879	13
1944	Haslam v. De Alvarez	38 A.2d 158	12
1942	Otto Seidner, Inc. v. Ralston Purina Co.	24 A.2d 902	12
1943	Cardall v. Shartenberg's, Inc.	31 A.2d 12	10
1937	Powers v. Home for Aged Women	192 A. 770	10
1936	Tisdall Co. C. v. Board of Aldermen C.	188 A. 648	10
1936	Emond v. Fallon	186 A. 15	10
1941	Jackvony v. Powel	21 A.2d 554	9
1937	Industrial Trust Co. v. Parks	190 A. 32	9
1939	Garneau v. Garneau	9 A.2d 15	8
1939	Tillinghast v. Harrop	9 A.2d 28	8

Showing the 15 most-cited of 245 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 William Washburn Moss on?: William Washburn Moss 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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13 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).