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 1981 / Served to 1996

Robert D. Dudley

Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

Robert D. Dudley was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Arkansas, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1981–1996 · 14 yrs

Judicial service

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

Judicial Record

In our data, Dudley authored 839 published opinions for the court (1981–1996), plus 78 dissents and 38 concurrences. Most cited: Arkansas Women's Political Caucus v. Riviere (461 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. 524 of these were attributed to Dudley 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
1984	Arkansas Women's Political Caucus v. Riviere	677 S.W.2d 846	461
1988	Gaines v. McCuen	758 S.W.2d 403	434
1990	Finn v. McCuen· Dissent†	798 S.W.2d 34	433
1990	Becker v. McCuen	798 S.W.2d 71	409
1994	Christian Civic Action Committee v. McCuen· Dissent†	884 S.W.2d 605	398
1992	Plugge Ex Rel. Arkansas for Representative Democracy v. McCuen· Dissent†	841 S.W.2d 139	397
1989	McCambridge v. City of Little Rock	766 S.W.2d 909	247
1982	Hill v. State· Concurrence†	628 S.W.2d 284	122
1996	Echols v. State	936 S.W.2d 509	121
1982	City of Little Rock v. Cash	644 S.W.2d 229	115
1983	DuPree v. Alma School District No. 30· Concurrence†	651 S.W.2d 90	99
1994	U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Hill· Concurrence†	872 S.W.2d 349	92
1988	Franz Ex Rel. Simmons v. State	754 S.W.2d 839	85
1988	Fitzhugh v. State	752 S.W.2d 275	82
1991	Arnold v. Kemp· Concurrence†	813 S.W.2d 770	81

Showing the 15 most-cited of 956 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 Robert D. Dudley on?: Robert D. Dudley 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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14 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).