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 1938 / Served to 1983

J Seaborn Holt

Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

J Seaborn Holt was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, who joined the court in 1938. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1938–1983 · 45 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1938	Supreme Court of Arkansas	–	–
1963	Supreme Court of Arkansas	–	–
1969	Supreme Court of Arkansas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Holt authored 1,835 published opinions for the court (1938–1983), plus 74 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Leigh v. Hall (451 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. 879 of these were attributed to Holt 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	Leigh v. Hall	339 S.W.2d 104	451
1957	Mo. Pac. Trans. Co. v. Miller· Dissent†	299 S.W.2d 41	68
1974	C. & A. Construction Co. v. Benning Construction Co.	509 S.W.2d 302	63
1963	Cooper v. Cherokee Village Development Co.	364 S.W.2d 158	60
1957	Sloan v. Sears, Roebuck & Co.· Dissent†	308 S.W.2d 802	58
1979	Gustafson v. State· Dissent†	590 S.W.2d 853	56
1976	Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance v. Williams	543 S.W.2d 467	56
1979	Ford Motor Credit Co. v. Herring	589 S.W.2d 584	54
1972	Bennett v. State	477 S.W.2d 497	54
1980	Daniels v. City of Fort Smith†	268 Ark. 157	53
1969	LA Green Seed Company of Arkansas v. Williams	438 S.W.2d 717	53
1958	Ark. State Highway Comm. v. Mabry	315 S.W.2d 900	52
1953	C & L Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. v. Kincaid	256 S.W.2d 337	51
1948	Glidewell, Admin. v. Arkhola Sand Gravel Co.	208 S.W.2d 4	51
1971	Wenderoth v. City of Fort Smith	472 S.W.2d 74	50

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,917 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 J Seaborn Holt on?: J Seaborn Holt 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

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45 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).