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 1997 / Served to 2004

Ray Thornton

Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

Ray Thornton was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, who joined the court in 1997. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1928 · age 98
Tenure: 1997–2004 · 7 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1997	Supreme Court of Arkansas	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thornton authored 277 published opinions for the court (1997–2004), plus 73 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: J.T. v. Arkansas Department of Human Services (210 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. 156 of these were attributed to Thornton 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
1997	J.T. v. Arkansas Department of Human Services· Dissent†	947 S.W.2d 761	210
2000	State v. Larimore	17 S.W.3d 87	177
2003	Davis v. State	94 S.W.3d 892	118
2003	Anderson v. State· Concurrence†	108 S.W.3d 592	111
2002	Jegley v. Picado· Dissent†	80 S.W.3d 332	100
2001	Laime v. State· Dissent†	60 S.W.3d 464	96
2000	Harmon v. State· Dissent†	8 S.W.3d 472	85
1999	Hodges v. Huckabee	995 S.W.2d 341	84
1997	ACW, INC. v. Weiss	947 S.W.2d 770	82
2002	Cave City Nursing Home, Inc. v. Arkansas Department of Human Services· Dissent†	89 S.W.3d 884	78
1997	Vanderpool v. Fidelity & Casualty Insurance	939 S.W.2d 280	78
2000	City of Caddo Valley v. George· Dissent†	9 S.W.3d 481	71
1998	Edwards v. Stills· Dissent†	984 S.W.2d 366	70
2001	Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A. v. Richard's Honda Yamaha	38 S.W.3d 356	69
2000	Ozark Gas Pipeline Corp. v. Arkansas Public Service Commission· Dissent†	29 S.W.3d 730	69

Showing the 15 most-cited of 368 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 Ray Thornton on?: Ray Thornton 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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7 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).