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 1979 / Served to 1989

John I. Purtle

Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

John I. Purtle was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1923 · age 103
Tenure: 1979–1989 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Supreme Court of Arkansas	–	–

Education

University of Central Arkansas
University of Arkansas

Judicial Record

In our data, Purtle authored 470 published opinions for the court (1979–1990), plus 430 dissents and 88 concurrences. Most cited: Becker v. Riviere (448 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. 797 of these were attributed to Purtle 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
1980	Becker v. Riviere· Dissent†	604 S.W.2d 555	448
1988	Gaines v. McCuen· Dissent†	758 S.W.2d 403	434
1989	McCambridge v. City of Little Rock· Concurrence†	766 S.W.2d 909	247
1988	Sterling Drug, Inc. v. Oxford· Dissent†	743 S.W.2d 380	175
1984	Berna v. State· Dissent†	670 S.W.2d 434	131
1982	Hill v. State· Concurrence†	628 S.W.2d 284	122
1982	City of Little Rock v. Cash· Dissent†	644 S.W.2d 229	115
1986	White v. State· Dissent†	717 S.W.2d 784	113
1986	Bolden v. Watt	719 S.W.2d 428	109
1983	DuPree v. Alma School District No. 30· Concurrence†	651 S.W.2d 90	99
1984	Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Broadway Arms Corp.	664 S.W.2d 463	90
1983	Rector v. State· Concurrence†	659 S.W.2d 168	83
1988	Fitzhugh v. State· Dissent†	752 S.W.2d 275	82
1982	Perry v. State	642 S.W.2d 865	81
1982	Baxter v. State· Dissent†	626 S.W.2d 935	78

Showing the 15 most-cited of 988 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 John I. Purtle on?: John I. Purtle 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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10 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).