Dan Kemp
Dan Kemp was the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He assumed office on January 1, 2017. He left office on December 31, 2024.
In Arkansas, the position of chief justice is a specific seat on the court (similar to the Supreme Court of the United States) rather than a peer-selected leadership position. Kemp was elected to this position in March 2016 for a term that began on January 1, 2017. He defeated Justice Courtney Goodson for the seat previously occupied by Howard Brill.[1][2]
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country. As part of this study, we assigned each justice a Confidence Score describing our confidence in the degree of partisanship exhibited by the justices' past partisan behavior, before they joined the court.[3] Kemp received a confidence score of Mild Republican.[4] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Kemp received his undergraduate degree from the University of Arkansas in 1973 and his J.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1976.[5]
Kemp was previously the Division 1 judge on the Arkansas 16th Judicial Circuit. He held the seat from 1987 until he joined the supreme court in 2016.[6][5][7] Kemp was a Calico Rock City Court Judge from 1979 to 1981, and served as a judge on the Mountain View Municipal Court from 1977 to 1986. He was the Mountain View city attorney and had a private attorney practice in 1976.[8][5] In 1978 Kemp was a delegate to the Arkansas Constitutional Convention.[5]
Elections
2024
- See also: Arkansas Supreme Court elections, 2024
Dan Kemp did not file to run for re-election.
2016
- See also: Arkansas Supreme Court elections, 2016
Kemp ran for the position of chief justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2016. He defeated Justice Courtney Goodson in the March 1 election.[2]
| Arkansas Supreme Court, Chief Justice, 2016 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Dan Kemp |
57.56% | 344,523 |
| Courtney Hudson Goodson | 42.43% | 253,941 |
| Total Votes (100% Reporting) | 598,464 | |
| Source: Arkansas Secretary of State Official ResultsSebastian County Arkansas | ||
2014
- See also: Arkansas judicial elections, 2014
Kemp ran for re-election to the Sixteenth Circuit. He won without opposition in the general election on May 20, 2014.[7]
Analysis
Ballotpedia Courts State Partisanship (2020)
Last updated: June 15, 2020
In 2020, Ballotpedia published Ballotpedia Courts: State Partisanship, a study examining the partisan affiliation of all state supreme court justices in the country as of June 15, 2020.
The study presented Confidence Scores that represented our confidence in each justice's degree of partisan affiliation. This was not a measure of where a justice fell on an ideological spectrum, but rather a measure of how much confidence we had that a justice was or had been affiliated with a political party. The scores were based on seven factors, including but not limited to party registration.[9]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[10]
- Mild Republican
- Strong Republican
This justice's Confidence Score, as well as the factors contributing to that score, is presented below. The information below was current as of June 2020.
Dan
Kemp
Arkansas
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Mild Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Elected - Key Factors:
- Donated less than $2,000 to Republican candidates
- State was a Republican trifecta at time of appointment
Partisan Profile
Details:
Kemp donated $100 to Republican candidates and organizations. Arkansas was a Republican trifecta at the time of his appointment.
Noteworthy events
Professional misconduct complaint
On September 20, 2018, the Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disciplinary Commission announced charges of ethical misconduct against Arkansas Supreme Court Justices Dan Kemp, Robin Wynne, Courtney Hudson Goodson, Josephine Hart, Karen Baker, and Rhonda Wood. The charges followed a complaint Pulaski County Judge Wendell Griffen filed in April 2017. Griffen alleged the justices did not give him enough time to respond to a ruling removing him from capital punishment cases.[11]
On April 14, 2017, Griffen filed an injunction preventing the execution of seven inmates by capital punishment. He attended a death penalty protest the same day. On April 15, Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge (R) asked the state supreme court to reverse Griffen's injunction and remove him from a case involving the death penalty. The supreme court clerk contacted Griffen about Rutledge's request the afternoon of April 15 and gave Griffen until 9 a.m. April 17 to respond. He was removed from the case after failing to respond by the deadline.[12]
The judicial commission said the justices did not provide Griffen with a sufficient amount of time to respond.[12]
State supreme court judicial selection in Arkansas
- See also: Judicial selection in Arkansas
The seven justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court are selected through nonpartisan elections. They compete in nonpartisan general elections—occurring at the same time as the primary elections for other state officials—in which the candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote wins the seat. If no candidate garners a majority of the vote, the top two candidates compete in a runoff during the November general election.[13]
The winners are elected to eight-year terms.[13]
Qualifications
To serve on this court, a justice must be:[14]
- licensed to practice law in Arkansas for at least eight years;
- a qualified elector within the geographic area from which chosen.
Chief justice
The court's chief justice is selected by voters at large and serves in that capacity for a full eight-year term.[15]
Vacancies
In the event of a midterm vacancy, an interim judge is selected by the governor to fill the empty seat. If the open seat would have been filled at the next general election if the vacancy did not occur, the appointed justice will serve the remainder of the unexpired term. If the open seat would not have been regularly filled at the next general election, the appointee will serve until the next general election if the vacancy occurred more than four months prior to the election. If the vacancy occurs less than four months prior to the next general election, then the justice will serve until the second succeeding general election. A justice appointed by the governor to serve an unexpired term is ineligible to run for re-election to their seat.[13]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Charlotte Observer, "Outside groups' spending pays off in Arkansas court races", accessed March 2, 2016
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Arkansas Secretary of State, "Candidate Information: 2016 Preferential Primary and Nonpartisan General Election," accessed December 29, 2015
- ↑ We calculated confidence scores by collecting several data points such as party registration, donations, and previous political campaigns.
- ↑ The five possible confidence scores were: Strong Democrat, Mild Democrat, Indeterminate, Mild Republican, and Strong Republican.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Arkansas Judiciary, "Chief Justice John Dan Kemp, Position 1," accessed June 21, 2021
- ↑ Arkansas Judiciary, "Circuit courts," accessed April 27, 2014
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Arkansas Secretary of State, "2014 Arkansas Preferential Primary Elections and Nonpartisan Election," updated May 29, 2014
- ↑ 16th Judicial District of Arkansas, "John Dan Kemp"accessed June 14, 2021
- ↑ The seven factors were party registration, donations made to partisan candidates, donations made to political parties, donations received from political parties or bodies with clear political affiliation, participation in political campaigns, the partisanship of the body responsible for appointing the justice, and state trifecta status when the justice joined the court.
- ↑ An Indeterminate score indicates that there is either not enough information about the justice’s partisan affiliations or that our research found conflicting partisan affiliations.
- ↑ Arkansas Judicial Discipline & Disciplinary Commission, "Press release," accessed September 20, 2018
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Talk Business & Politics, "Panel files formal charges against six Arkansas Supreme Court justices over Griffen fight," accessed September 20, 2018
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Arkansas Judiciary, "Arkansas Supreme Court," accessed March 27, 2023 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "ssc" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Services, "Ark. Const. Amendment 80, §16," accessed April 15, 2025
- ↑ Justia, "Arkansas Constitution - Amendment 80 - Qualifications of justices and judges.," accessed March 27, 2023
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by - |
Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice 2017-2024 |
Succeeded by Karen R. Baker |
Federal courts:
Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of Arkansas, Western District of Arkansas • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: Eastern District of Arkansas, Western District of Arkansas
State courts:
Arkansas Supreme Court • Arkansas Court of Appeals • Arkansas Circuit Courts • Arkansas District Courts • Arkansas City Courts
State resources:
Courts in Arkansas • Arkansas judicial elections • Judicial selection in Arkansas
