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 2013 / Active

Philip Whiteaker

Judge, Court of Appeals of Arkansas

Philip Whiteaker is a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Arkansas, serving since 2013. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2013	Court of Appeals of Arkansas	–	–

Education

Southern Methodist University

Judicial Record

In our data, Whiteaker authored 286 published opinions for the court (2013–2019), plus 4 dissents and 14 concurrences. Most cited: Gonzalez v. Ark. Dep't of Human Servs. (53 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. 93 of these were attributed to Whiteaker 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
2018	Gonzalez v. Ark. Dep't of Human Servs.†	555 S.W.3d 915	53
2018	Kohlman v. Ark. Dep't of Human Servs. & Minor Children· Concurrence†	544 S.W.3d 595	41
2014	Fox v. Arkansas Department of Human Services	2014 Ark. App. 666	39
2016	Jackson v. Arkansas Department of Human Services†	2016 Ark. App. 440	33
2013	Jackson v. Arkansas Department of Human Services†	429 S.W.3d 276	30
2017	Furnish v. Arkansas Department of Human Services	2017 Ark. App. 511	27
2014	Henson v. Arkansas Department of Human Services	2014 Ark. App. 225	22
2015	Brown v. Arkansas Department of Human Services	2015 Ark. App. 725	20
2016	Clark v. Arkansas Department of Human Services†	2016 Ark. App. 286	18
2014	Myers v. State	2014 Ark. App. 720	18
2019	Tovias v. Ark. Dep't of Human Servs.†	575 S.W.3d 621	16
2018	Sills v. Ark. Dep't of Human Servs.†	538 S.W.3d 249	16
2015	Harris v. Arkansas Department of Human Services	2015 Ark. App. 508	16
2013	Davis v. Schneider National, Inc.	2013 Ark. App. 737	15
2017	McNeer v. Arkansas Department of Human Services	2017 Ark. App. 512	14

Showing the 15 most-cited of 304 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 is Philip Whiteaker on?: Philip Whiteaker is 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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13 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).