Robert Flanders

Flanders was born in 1949 in North Massapequa, Long Island, New York and grew up in a middle-class family.[2] His father was a salesman while his mother worked in fast food restaurants.[2] He received his early education from Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York.

For his college education, he went to Brown University and graduated magna cum laude in 1971 with a major in English.[2] During his college years at Brown, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received a prize for an essay he wrote on the classicism of Henry Fielding in Tom Jones.[2]

As a law student at Harvard, Flanders played minor league baseball for the Detroit Tigers and served as an editor of the Harvard Law Record.[3] He graduated from law school in 1974.[4]

Flanders began his legal career in New York as associate with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in litigation law.

In 1975, he returned to Rhode Island and joined 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 was elected to the Town Council of Barrington, where he served for two terms.[2] He later became the town solicitor for Glocester, Rhode Island and general counsel to the Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation.[2]

In 1987, he founded a business and government litigation firm, Flanders and Medeiros.[4]

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.[5]

In 2011, he was appointed as the Receiver for Central Falls, Rhode Island by the state. He led the municipal restructuring and bankruptcy of the finances of the city.[6] As a result, $6 million operating deficit was eliminated and this provided the city with a 5-year consensual recovery plan.[6]

Flanders 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.[4]

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.[4]

Flanders grew up in a middle class household and is the oldest of seven children.[2] He is a strong advocate of separation of powers.[2]

He and his wife Ann live in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.[4]

• Flanders, Jr., Robert G. et al. (2017). A Practical Guide to Land Use Law in Rhode Island

• Flanders Senate campaign website