Supreme Court of Arkansas | Position 3
Courtney Goodson
Telephone: 501-590-0511
Email: courtneyforar@gmail.com
Date of Birth: 7/7/1972
Place of Birth: Lawton, OK
Marital Status: Married; 1 son, 2 daughters
Religion/Denomination: Brand New Church, Farmington, AR
Previous Elected Office: Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge
Current Elected Office: Arkansas Supreme Court Justice, Pos. 3
Occupation: Arkansas Supreme Court Justice, State of Arkansas
Law School Attended & Graduation Date: University of Arkansas School of Law – May 1997
Where Employed as an Attorney: Arkansas Court of Appeals
Legal Specialties: Appellate Law
Additional Biographic Information
1. Which one of the U. S. Supreme Court Justices most reflects your judicial philosophy?
John Roberts
2. What is the proper role of the court for which you are seeking office?
The role of the Arkansas Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Arkansas. The Court is tasked with interpreting the law without creating public policy. Under no circumstances should a judge engage in judicial activism. The Arkansas Supreme Court should be a place where the rule of law is upheld and the constitution honored.
3. Of the decisions you have made while serving as a judge or cases you have litigated as an attorney, which best reflects your judicial philosophy?
As a judge, I am a strict constructionist. I am committed to the rule of law and to the doctrine of stare decisis. I cannot highlight any particular decisions, as I strive to consistently apply my judicial philosophy to each case before me. I am always mindful that each case that I decide has the potential to affect the daily lives and businesses of Arkansans.
David Sterling
Telephone: 501-416-1693
Email: david@votedavidsterling.com
Date of Birth: 3/18/1969
Place of Birth: Roswell, New Mexico
Marital Status: Married; 1 daughter
Religion/Denomination: Fellowship Bible Church – Little Rock, AR
Occupation: Arkansas Department of Human Services – Chief Counsel
Law School Attended & Graduation Date: William H. Bowen School of Law, 1997
Where Employed as an Attorney: DHS; Cox, Sterling, McClure, & Vandiver, PLLC; Barber, McCaskill, Jones, & Hale, PA; Allen Law Firm
Legal Specialties: Business and Commercial Litigation
Additional Biographic Information
1. Which one of the U. S. Supreme Court Justices most reflects your judicial philosophy?
Neil Gorsuch
2. What is the proper role of the court for which you are seeking office?
As stated by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, I also believe that “Judges should be in the business of declaring what the law is using the traditional tools of interpretation, rather than pronouncing the law as they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.” … [O]ur legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws. It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives.”
3. Of the decisions you have made while serving as a judge or cases you have litigated as an attorney, which best reflects your judicial philosophy?
I served as co-counsel successfully cutting off Planned Parenthood as a Medicaid provider in Arkansas. My judicial philosophy is one of judicial restraint, originalism and textualism. I believe that judges are not policy-makers and should never legislate from the bench. That philosophy is reflected in Does v. Gillespie, 867 F.3d 1034, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 15453, 2017 WL 3496164, in which I represented, along with the Arkansas Attorney General’s office, the Arkansas Department of Human Services in successfully defending the decision of the Arkansas Department of Human Services to terminate its Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma after the release of controversial video recordings involving other Planned Parenthood affiliates. In its decision, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of DHS, using traditional methods of statutory interpretation to determine that Congress never intended to create a private right of action under the Medicaid Act for Planned Parenthood’s patients to challenge DHS’s termination of those provider agreements. In the opinion, Judge Steven Colloton quoted Justice Antonin Scalia’s writings on the subject: “Perhaps no interpretive fault is more common than the failure to follow the whole-text canon, which calls on the judicial interpreter to consider the entire text, in view of its structure and of the physical and logical relation of its many parts.” Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 167 (2012). “The proper inquiry is whether Congress intended to create an enforceable federal right when it enacted the specific provision in question. Congressional intent or meaning is not discerned by considering merely a portion of a statutory provision in isolation, but rather by reading the complete provision in the context of the statute as a whole.”