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Dustin Rowe
2020 - Present
2029
5
Dustin P. Rowe is a judge for District 2 of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. He assumed office on February 24, 2020. His current term ends on January 7, 2029.
Rowe ran for re-election for the District 2 judge of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. He won in the retention election on November 8, 2022.
Rowe was elected chief justice of the court by his peers for a two-year term beginning on January 1, 2025. He took his oath of office on February 24, 2025.[1]
Rowe was first appointed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court by Governor Kevin Stitt (R) on November 20, 2019, to succeed Justice Patrick Wyrick.[2] He was chosen by the governor from a list of three candidates selected by the Oklahoma Judicial Nominating Commission. To learn more about this vacancy, click here.
Rowe was a 2012 Republican candidate who sought election to the U.S. House to represent the 2nd Congressional District of Oklahoma.[3] Rowe was defeated in the Republican primary on June 26, 2012.[4]
Rowe was elected mayor of Tishomingo, Oklahoma, in April 1994, at the age of 18. He served two terms.[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.[5] Rowe received a confidence score of Strong Republican.[6] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Rowe earned his B.A. with honors from East Central University in 1998 and his J.D. from the University of Oklahoma College of Law, where he was named a Lee B. Thompson Scholar in 2001.[2]
At the time of his supreme court appointment, Rowe was district judge of the Chickasaw Nation District Court, a position he assumed in 2011. From 2005 to 2011, Rowe was special judge of the Chickasaw Nation District Court. He began practicing law as an attorney in Tishomingo, Oklahoma, in 2001.[2] Rowe was elected mayor of Tishomingo, Oklahoma, at the age of 18, becoming one of the youngest mayors in the country. At the age of 22, he became district director for the newly-elected U.S. Rep. Wes Watkins (D).
Elections
2022
See also: Oklahoma Supreme Court elections, 2022
Oklahoma Supreme Court District 2, Dustin P. Rowe's seat
Dustin P. Rowe was retained to District 2 of the Oklahoma Supreme Court on November 8, 2022 with 64.9% of the vote.
Retention Vote |
% |
Votes |
|||
| ✔ | Yes |
64.9
|
668,080 | ||
No |
35.1
|
361,278 | |||
Total Votes |
1,029,358 | ||||
|
|
2012
Rowe ran in the 2012 election for the U.S. House to represent Oklahoma's 2nd District. Wallace sought the nomination on the Republican ticket. The signature filing deadline for candidates wishing to run was April 13, 2012. Pettigrew faced Markwayne Mullin, George Faught, Wayne Pettigrew, Dwayne Thompson, and Dakota Wood in the primary on June 26, 2012. The incumbent from the 2nd Congressional District is Dan Boren (D), who did not seek re-election in 2012. Rowe was defeated in the Republican primary on June 26, 2012.[4]
Campaign themes
2022
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Dustin P. Rowe did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.
Appointments
2019
Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Patrick Wyrick vacated his seat on the state supreme court on April 10, 2019, when he received commission to become an Article III federal judge on the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.
On November 20, 2019, Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) appointed Dustin Rowe to succeed Wyrick on the state supreme court. Rowe was Stitt's second nominee to the nine-member supreme court.[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.[8]
The five resulting categories of Confidence Scores were:
- Strong Democrat
- Mild Democrat
- Indeterminate[9]
- 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.
Dustin
Rowe
Oklahoma
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Strong Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Assisted appointment through hybrid judicial nominating commission - Key Factors:
- Was a registered Republican as of 2020
- Donated over $2,000 to Republican candidates
- Held political office as a Republican
Partisan Profile
Details:
Rowe was a registered Republican as of 2020. He donated $2,920 to Republican candidates. In 2012 he was a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representetives to represent the 2nd Congressional District of Oklahoma. He was appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) in 2019 while the state of Oklahoma was a Republican trifecta.
State supreme court judicial selection in Oklahoma
- See also: Judicial selection in Oklahoma
The nine justices of the Oklahoma Supreme Court are selected through the assisted appointment method. Each justice is appointed by the governor from a list of three names compiled by the Oklahoma Judicial Nominating Commission.[10][11]
The appointed justice serves an initial term of at least one year, after which they must stand for retention during the next general election. Subsequent terms last six years.[10][12]
Qualifications
To serve on this court, a justice must be:
- at least 30 years old;
- a qualified voter in his or her respective district for at least one year; and
- licensed to practice for at least five years in the state (or have five years of service as a judge of a court of record).[10]
Chief justice
The chief justice of the court is selected by peer vote, serving in that capacity for two years.[10]
Vacancies
If a justice retires before the end of his or her term, the vacancy is filled just as it normally would be, with the governor appointing a successor from a list of names provided by the nominating commission. If the appointment is not made within 60 days of the vacancy, the chief justice is responsible for selecting a replacement.[13] The appointed justice then must stand for retention in the next general election after he or she has served one year on the bench to serve out the remainder of his or her predecessor's term.[10][12]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
External links
|
Officeholder Oklahoma Supreme Court District 2 |
Footnotes
- ↑ KTEN, "Tishomingo native takes oath as Oklahoma's new chief justice," February 24, 2025
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 OK.gov, "Governor Stitt appoints Dustin P. Rowe to Supreme Court of Oklahoma," November 20, 2019
- ↑ McAlesternews.com Candidates continue race for U.S. Congress December 17, 2011
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Oklahoma Elections Division, "Election Results" accessed July 1, 2021
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ OK.gov, "Governor Stitt appoints Dustin P. Rowe to Supreme Court of Oklahoma," November 20, 2019
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 National Center for State Courts, "Methods of Judicial Selection: Oklahoma," accessed September 22, 2021
- ↑ Oklahoma State Courts Network, "Oklahoma Judicial Nominating Commission," accessed September 22, 2021
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Justia, "Section VII-B-5," accessed September 22, 2021
- ↑ Oklahoma Public Research System, "Section VII-B-4: Vacancy in Judicial Office - Filling," accessed September 22, 2021
| ||||||||||
Federal courts:
Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals • U.S. District Court: Eastern District of Oklahoma, Northern District of Oklahoma, Western District of Oklahoma • U.S. Bankruptcy Court: Eastern District of Oklahoma, Northern District of Oklahoma, Western District of Oklahoma
State courts:
Oklahoma Supreme Court • Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals • Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals • Oklahoma District Courts • Oklahoma Workers' Compensation Court of Existing Claims
State resources:
Courts in Oklahoma • Oklahoma judicial elections • Judicial selection in Oklahoma
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