Robert Flanders

Robert G. Flanders Jr. (born July 9, 1949) is a Rhode Island attorney who served as an Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court from 1996 to 2004. Flanders was the Republican Party nominee for the 2018 election for US Senator from Rhode Island. He lost the election to Democratic incumbent Sheldon Whitehouse.

Robert Flanders
Associate Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court
In office
1996–2004
Personal details
Born (1949-07-09) July 9, 1949
North Massapequa, New York, U.S.
Political partyRepublican
EducationBrown University (BA)
Harvard University (JD)

Early life and education

Flanders was born and grew up in North Massapequa, Long Island, New York, and graduated from Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York. He attended Brown University and graduated magna cum laude in 1971. As a law student at Harvard, Flanders played minor league baseball for the Tigers and served as an editor of the Harvard Law Record. He graduated from law school in 1974.[1]

Career

Flanders began his legal career in New York as associate with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison in litigation law. He returned to Rhode Island in 1975, and the firm of Edwards & Angell, where he became a partner and Chairman of the firm's Litigation Department. He also served as assistant executive counsel to the Governor of Rhode Island. He elected to the Town Council of Barrington, where he served for two terms. He later became the town solicitor for Glocester, Rhode Island and general counsel to the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation. In 1987, he founded his own business and government litigation firm, Flanders and Medeiros.[1]

In 1996, after serving as special prosecutor for the Judicial Tenure and Discipline Commission and being chosen as one of five finalists by a judicial merit-selection commission, Governor Lincoln Almond named Flanders to a vacant seat on the five member Rhode Island Supreme Court. On March 29, 1996, Flanders was sworn in as one of the five Justices of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. In 2004, after eight years of service on the Supreme Court, Justice Flanders resigned to return to private law practice as a partner in the law firm of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder.[2] He has also served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at the Roger Williams University Law School, where he has taught constitutional law and judicial process courses, and as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law and Public Policy at Brown University, where he taught courses on constitutional theory and the judicial process.[1]

Flanders serves as a member of various boards of directors and commissions, including the CARE New England Hospital system, Women & Infants Hospital (vice chair of the board), the Providence Performing Arts Center, the Veterans Memorial Auditorium, the Rhode Island Historical Society, Common Cause of Rhode Island, the Brown University Leadership Advisory Council, and the Greater Providence YMCA, where he served as Chairman of the Board for a three-year term that ended on May 29, 2003.[1]

2018 Senate campaign
Main article: 2018 United States Senate election in Rhode Island

Flanders won the Republican party nomination, defeating the only other candidate on the ballot, Rocky De La Fuente,[3] a businessman who was seeking to get on the Senate ballot in several states in 2018.[4] In the general election of November 6, 2018, he lost to incumbent Sheldon Whitehouse, receiving 38% of the vote to Whitehouse's 61%.[5]

Personal

Flanders grew up in a middle class household and is the oldest of seven children. He and his wife Ann live in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.[1]

Notes
  1. "Governor Lincoln D. Chafee Names Justice Robert G. Flanders, Jr. Central Falls Receiver". RI.gov. 31 Jan 2011. Retrieved 22 Oct 2018.
  2. Alicia Korney (11 Sep 2004). "Former Supreme Court judge steps down to join law firm". Providence business News. Retrieved 22 Oct 2018.
  3. "United States Senate primary election in Rhode Island, 2018".
  4. Fuente, Roque De La (May 31, 2018). "De La Fuente Runs for US Sen. in 5 States Simultaneously". Retrieved August 17, 2018.
  5. "United States Senate general election in Rhode Island, 2018".
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Party political offices
Preceded by
Barry Hinckley		 Republican nominee for U.S. Senator from Rhode Island
(Class 1)
2018		 Most recent
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