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 1958 / Served to 1973

William Edmonds Powers

Justice, Rhode Island Supreme Court

William Edmonds Powers was a Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1958. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1907–1989
Tenure: 1958–1973 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1958	Rhode Island Supreme Court	–	–

Education

Boston University

Judicial Record

In our data, Powers authored 429 published opinions for the court (1958–1973), plus 3 dissents and 3 concurrences. Most cited: Viti v. Zoning Board of Review of Providence (119 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. 118 of these were attributed to Powers 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
1960	Viti v. Zoning Board of Review of Providence	166 A.2d 211	119
1968	Woodward v. Stewart	243 A.2d 917	91
1968	State v. Leavitt	237 A.2d 309	62
1968	State Ex Rel. Colvin v. Lombardi	241 A.2d 625	55
1969	Brown v. Church of the Holy Name of Jesus†	105 R.I. 322	50
1968	Cahoone v. Board of Review of the Department of Employment Security· Concurrence†	104 R.I. 503	47
1959	L'Etoile v. Director of Public Works	153 A.2d 173	45
1966	Allstate Insurance Company v. Fusco	223 A.2d 447	39
1970	Frank Ansuini, Inc. v. City of Cranston	264 A.2d 910	36
1963	Castellucci v. Castellucci	188 A.2d 467	36
1964	Lincourt v. Zoning Board of Review	201 A.2d 482	31
1972	Jacob v. Burke	296 A.2d 456	30
1967	Tantimonaco v. ZONING BD. OF JOHNSTON	232 A.2d 385	30
1962	Sweeney v. Notte	183 A.2d 296	30
1967	Atlantic Refining Co. v. Director of Public Works	233 A.2d 423	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 435 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 Edmonds Powers on?: William Edmonds Powers 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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15 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).