How do judges of the Supreme Court of Arkansas reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Arkansas / Joined 1912 / Served to 1949

Frank G. Smith

Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

Frank G. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, who joined the court in 1912. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1912–1949 · 37 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1912	Supreme Court of Arkansas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Smith authored 2,015 published opinions for the court (1912–1936), plus 74 dissents and 7 concurrences. Most cited: Walton v. McDonald, SEC. of State (411 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. 1,173 of these were attributed to Smith 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	Walton v. McDonald, SEC. of State†	97 S.W.2d 81	411
1931	Westbrook v. McDonald	44 S.W.2d 331	90
1923	Pugsley v. Sellmeyer†	158 Ark. 247	47
1928	Fulbright v. Phipps	3 S.W.2d 49	46
1935	Arkansas State Highway Commission v. Nelson Bros.· Dissent	87 S.W.2d 394	44
1933	Jernigan v. Harris	62 S.W.2d 5	43
1913	Davidson v. State· Dissent†	108 Ark. 191	43
1935	Baldwin v. Wingfield· Dissent	85 S.W.2d 689	41
1925	Sims v. Ahrens	271 S.W. 720	40
1914	Cotham v. Coffman†	111 Ark. 108	40
1927	Coca Cola Bottling Co. v. Shipp	297 S.W. 856	38
1926	Emerson v. Boyles· Dissent	280 S.W. 1005	37
1932	Parker v. Sims	51 S.W.2d 517	36
1913	Commercial Union Fire Insurance v. King†	108 Ark. 130	36
1919	Oliver v. Southern Trust Co.†	138 Ark. 381	35

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,096 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 Supreme Court of Arkansas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Frank G. Smith on?: Frank G. Smith was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

37 years on the Supreme Court of Arkansas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).