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 1994

Steele Hays

Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas

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

Born: 1925 · age 101
Tenure: 1981–1994 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

George Washington University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hays authored 652 published opinions for the court (1981–1994), plus 213 dissents and 33 concurrences. Most cited: Finn v. McCuen (433 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. 568 of these were attributed to Hays 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
1990	Finn v. McCuen· Dissent†	798 S.W.2d 34	433
1990	Chrisco v. Sun Industries, Inc.	800 S.W.2d 717	220
1984	Harris v. State	681 S.W.2d 334	150
1983	DuPree v. Alma School District No. 30	651 S.W.2d 90	99
1994	U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Hill· Concurrence†	872 S.W.2d 349	92
1984	Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. Broadway Arms Corp.· Concurrence†	664 S.W.2d 463	90
1988	Franz Ex Rel. Simmons v. State· Dissent†	754 S.W.2d 839	85
1986	Rad-Razorback Ltd. Partnership v. B.G. Coney Co.	713 S.W.2d 462	79
1985	Jim Halsey Co., Inc. v. Bonar· Concurrence†	683 S.W.2d 898	77
1983	Berkeley Pump Co. v. Reed-Joseph Land Co.	653 S.W.2d 128	76
1993	Pyle v. State	862 S.W.2d 823	74
1987	Duncan v. State	726 S.W.2d 653	74
1986	Snell v. State	721 S.W.2d 628	68
1993	Lupo v. Lineberger· Dissent†	855 S.W.2d 293	67
1993	Burns v. Burns· Dissent†	847 S.W.2d 23	65

Showing the 15 most-cited of 898 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 Steele Hays on?: Steele Hays 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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12 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).