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6/3/2026
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Senate OKs Sen. Zurier bill to reform judicial nominating process
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STATE HOUSE — The Senate today approved legislation from Sen. Samuel D. Zurier to reform the judicial nominating process to ensure more highly qualified candidates are available for the governor’s consideration.
Candidates for Rhode Island’s judicial vacancies are vetted by the Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC), which interviews a group of candidates it deems to be “qualified,” from which it selects three to five highly qualified candidates for possible appointment by the governor and confirmation by the Senate. Sometimes, the pool of candidates for one vacancy includes one or more who were part of a list of highly qualified candidates sent to the Governor for a previous vacancy on the same court. Under the current system, these candidates are considered fresh like every other applicant.
Senator Zurier’s bill (2026-S 2128) would make any highly qualified judicial candidate sent to the governor for consideration by the JNC eligible for judicial vacancies on the same court for a period of five years, unless the nominating commission votes to remove that candidate from future consideration. This automatic eligibility would not extend to the positions of presiding justice, chief justice or chief judge.
“The Judicial Nominating Commission’s task is challenging enough, but it can become impossible when the Commission has to compose lists of ‘highly qualified’ candidates for successive vacancies in the same court,” said Senator Zurier (D-Dist. 3, Providence). “Candidates who have recently been identified as highly qualified and sent to the governor for potential nomination must repeat the same process to be considered for another vacancy on the same court, sometimes resulting in anomalies where they are only presented to the governor for some vacancies, but not others. This process frustrates candidates, deprives the governor of the best choice of highly qualified candidates and raises questions for the public — if a candidate is highly qualified in one round, why not in a subsequent round? By allowing these candidates who have already been vetted as highly qualified to be considered by the governor for up to five years, this bill expands the pool of highly qualified candidates for each vacancy.”
Senator Zurier points to recent vacancies from the Rhode Island Superior Court as examples of how the current process can fall short. When two superior court justices retired at the same time last year, the current nominating process provided Governor McKee with a list of five “highly qualified” candidates for each vacancy, with only two names appearing on both lists. Because the governor can only pick one name from each list to send to the Senate, if he believed the best two candidates were on the same list, he would be unable to select the two best candidates unless they happened to be the only two who appeared on each list.
The bill would expire after 5 years on July 1, 2029, during which time the General Assembly could assess the effectiveness of the bill and choose to extend it or let it sunset.
The bill now heads to the House, where Rep. Matthew S. Dawson (D-Dist. 65, East Providence) has introduced companion legislation (2026-H 7641).
For more information, contact:
Tristan Grau, Publicist
State House Room B20
Providence, RI 02903
401.222.4935
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