Shawn Womack
2017 - Present
2032
8
Shawn Womack is a judge for Position 5 of the Arkansas Supreme Court. He assumed office on January 1, 2017. His current term ends on December 31, 2032.
Womack won re-election for the Position 5 judge of the Arkansas Supreme Court outright after the general election on March 5, 2024, was canceled.
Womack was elected to Paul Danielson's seat on the Arkansas Supreme Court on March 1, 2016. To read more about judicial selection in Arkansas, click here.
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.[1] Womack received a confidence score of Strong Republican.[2] Click here to read more about this study.
Biography
Womack earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Central Arkansas in 1994. He earned his J.D. at the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1996.[3][4]
In 1997 Womack worked as a legislative aide to U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson (R).[3][5] From 1997 to 2008 he was a member of the Baxter County Republican Central Committee and an attorney at Womack Law Firm. Womack was a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives from 1999 to 2002. In 2003 he was elected to the Arkansas State Senate, where he was the minority leader and served until 2008. Womack served as the Division 1 judge of the Fourteenth Circuit of Arkansas from 2009 until he joined the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2017.[6][3][5][7]
Elections
2024
See also: Arkansas Supreme Court elections, 2024
General election
The general election was canceled. Shawn Womack (Nonpartisan) won without appearing on the ballot.
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Womack in this election.
2016
- See also: Arkansas Supreme Court elections, 2016
On May 26, 2015, Justice Paul Danielson announced that he would not seek re-election in 2016.[8] Womack ran for Danielson's seat and won on March 1.
| Arkansas Supreme Court Associate Justice Position 5, 2016 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes |
 Shawn Womack |
67.50% | 378,444 |
| Clark Mason | 32.50% | 182,182 |
| Total Votes (100% Reporting) | 560,626 | |
| Source: Arkansas Secretary of State Official Results | ||
2014
- See also: Arkansas judicial elections, 2014
Womack ran for re-election to the Fourteenth Circuit. He won without opposition in the general election on May 20, 2014.[7]
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Shawn Womack did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
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.
Shawn
Womack
Arkansas
- Partisan Confidence Score:
Strong Republican - Judicial Selection Method:
Elected - Key Factors:
- Donated over $2,000 to Republican candidates
- Held political office as a Republican
- Was a registered Republican before 2020
Partisan Profile
Details:
Womack donated $5,140 to Republican candidates and organizations. He served as a Republican member of the Arkansas State House of Representatives and the Arkansas State Senate. Womack was a registered Republican prior to 2020. He received donations and endorsements from various Republican groups, including the Arkansas Republican Party. Arkansas was a Republican trifecta at the time of Womack’s appointment.
State supreme court and 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.[11]
The winners are elected to eight-year terms.[11]
Qualifications
To serve on this court, a justice must be:[12]
- 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.[13]
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.[11]
The map below highlights how vacancies are filled in state supreme courts across the country.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
|
Officeholder Arkansas Supreme Court Position 5 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Project Vote Smart, "Shawn Womack's biography," accessed April 26, 2014
- ↑ Linck Marketing, "Elect Shawn Womack circuit judge: Education," accessed 2008
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 ARRA News Service, "Senator Shawn Womack announces as candidate for circuit judge," accessed October 16, 2007
- ↑ Arkansas Judiciary, "Circuit courts," accessed April 26, 2014
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Arkansas Secretary of State, "2014 Arkansas Preferential Primary Elections and Nonpartisan Election," accessed May 27, 2014
- ↑ Paris Express, "Danielson reaffirms decision to retire," accessed August 26, 2015
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 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
| ||||||||||
