By AINSLEY PLATT | Arkansas Advocate
The race for a seat on the Arkansas Supreme Court in the March 3 election is nonpartisan, but that hasn’t prevented the two candidates in the race from calling each other too ideologically driven.
The race pits John Adams, a private attorney from Little Rock, against Justice Nicholas Bronni, who previously served in the Arkansas attorney general’s office as the solicitor general before his appointment to the Supreme Court. The solicitor general represents the state in appeals cases, such as before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The outcome of the race won’t change the ideological tilt of the court, where justices linked to Republicans hold a 5-2 majority. And it hasn’t drawn the massive sums of spending past Arkansas court races have seen, especially from outside conservative groups that are increasingly major players in judicial races around the country.
But whoever wins will sit on a court that’s expected to take up several high-profile cases winding their way through the court system, including lawsuits over abortion, school vouchers and executions.
Bronni was named to position six on the court by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2024, but the constitution bars him from being elected to the same seat since he was appointed. Instead, he is running for fellow Supreme Court appointee Cody Hiland’s seat, and Hiland is running unopposed for Bronni’s.
Philosophy and Ideology
Bronni, a self-identified conservative, was endorsed by the Republican Party of Arkansas in December after speaking to the state committee before they voted on the endorsement. He was also endorsed by top GOP figures such as Lt. Gov. Leslie Rutledge and Attorney General Tim Griffin.
The former state solicitor general’s website criticizes former Democratic President Joe Biden numerous times. He also touts his work in the attorney general’s office that touches on causes championed by Republicans. He defended state laws banning gender-affirming care for minors, and assisted in suing the Biden administration over changes to Title IX regulations that included non-discrimination protections for transgender students.
Bronni said he subscribes to originalism, a legal perspective favored by conservatives that focuses on the text of the Constitution as it was originally understood.
“(U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Clarence Thomas, I think, probably put it best once where he said there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution,” Bronni said, noting that Thomas was his favorite justice. “We can try as best we can, to discern what the framers intended, or we can simply make it up. I don’t believe in making it up.”
Adams — who represented the Central Arkansas Library System in its challenge of a state law imposing criminal penalties on librarians who provided minors with “harmful” materials — was adamant that he is a nonpartisan candidate in his interview.
The law was struck down by a federal judge, and the ruling has been appealed to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Adams said that the court should remain nonpartisan, and has campaigned on being “an independent voice holding government to account” while promoting judicial restraint.
He criticized the court for coming to decisions on matters it was not asked to consider, such as in its recent ruling involving the state’s medical marijuana program. He said he agreed with Justice Rhonda Wood’s concurring opinion that the court “didn’t need to reach the ultimate issue” it ended up ruling on to decide the case.
“That’s a sign that the court is sometimes not showing the restraint to only reach issues it needs to reach to come to a decision,” Adams said. “It’s one of the important principles that limits the role of an appeals court judge.”
Arkansas voters approved a constitutional amendment making all judicial races nonpartisan. Bronni said it was up to the people of Arkansas to decide if courts should remain nonpartisan.
This is Bronni’s first time running for elected office, though he has years of experience working for the state and federal government. Adams has spent years as a private attorney, but also had a stint as an assistant attorney general from 2009 to 2011.
Adams previously unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2010, and for the state House of Representatives in 2014 — both times as a Democrat. He was scheduled to speak with a number of local county Democratic Party organizations, according to Facebook posts by the organizations. Adams also spoke at an event hosted by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group.
However, Adams said his primary loyalty was to the Constitution, and that his party affiliation during previous campaigns would have no bearing on him if elected.
Adams promised he would not accept any party endorsements, while claiming Bronni was only speaking to people in the Republican Party and that the appointed justice was “highly ideological.”
He said campaigning had told him that Arkansans felt like “who you are and what you have” matters more to a court than the merits of someone’s legal case, and that voters want jurists who will “make a good faith effort to be nonpartisan.”
Bronni, Adams claimed, is not that person.
“The court is too often outcome-oriented when you’re talking about the court as a whole,” Adams said. “That’s particularly true when the state Supreme Court takes up issues surrounding ballot questions, and they treat different ballot initiatives differently based on whether they like or dislike the policy that people are pursuing.”
Bronni would not say whether he accepts or rejects the state GOP’s endorsement and denied that the Arkansas Supreme Court was ideological.
“Under the Arkansas Constitution, the court is nonpartisan,” he wrote in an email, while saying in his interview that he was proud to have support from voters across the ideological spectrum.
He accused his opponent of working in service of a “left-wing” agenda through his work on the library lawsuits.
“The reality is that there’s only one candidate in this race who’s ever run as a partisan candidate. That’s my opponent,” Bronni said.
Adams rejected the idea that his library work was partisan.
“Protecting the First Amendment is not a left or right issue,” he said.
Court Administration
Both candidates had less partisan administrative priorities for improving the justice system too.
Bronni said the court should do more to encourage pro bono work in rural areas. Fewer attorneys in the more remote areas of the state have real effects in areas like estate planning, property dispute resolution and criminal defense, he said.
“In many counties, there are no lawyers or are just a very small handful of lawyers,” Bronni said. “So the court really needs to do a better job of encouraging people to serve those communities, and some of that, encouraging people to do pro bono work in rural areas” through free legal clinics and other legal services.
Adams, on the other hand, said one of his priorities is to draw more awareness to fees and fines imposed by the court system that he says are too burdensome.
“The courts in Arkansas are, in significant part, funded by fees paid by many Arkansans that are struggling to get by,” Adams said. He said his pro bono experience in this area would bring an outside-the-government perspective to the court.
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