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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Arkansas / Joined 1981 / Served to 1997

James R. Cooper

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arkansas

James R. Cooper was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arkansas, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1981–1997 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Court of Appeals of Arkansas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Cooper authored 727 published opinions for the court (1905–1997), plus 87 dissents and 29 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Ruef (69 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. 499 of these were attributed to Cooper 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
1910	People v. Ruef	114 P. 48	69
1992	Death & Permanent Total Disability Trust Fund v. Whirlpool Corp.†	39 Ark. App. 62	60
1908	People v. Schmitz	94 P. 407	58
1982	Mad Butcher, Inc. v. Parker	628 S.W.2d 582	54
1993	Wright v. ABC Air, Inc.	864 S.W.2d 871	47
1982	Fisher v. State	643 S.W.2d 571	45
1983	Silvicraft, Inc. v. Lambert	661 S.W.2d 403	43
1994	Staab v. Hurst· Dissent†	868 S.W.2d 517	42
1983	Feagin v. Everett· Dissent†	652 S.W.2d 839	38
1907	People v. Ye Foo	89 P. 450	37
1987	Linthicum v. Mar-Bax Shirt Co.	741 S.W.2d 275	35
1989	Johnson v. Hux· Concurrence†	772 S.W.2d 362	34
1992	Deffenbaugh Industries & Travelers Insurance v. Angus	832 S.W.2d 869	32
1989	McClain v. Texaco, Inc.	780 S.W.2d 34	32
1905	People v. Richards	82 P. 691	31

Showing the 15 most-cited of 847 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 Court of Appeals of Arkansas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was James R. Cooper on?: James R. Cooper was a Judge of the Court of Appeals 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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16 years on the Court of Appeals of Arkansas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).