Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) appointed Meredith Blaise Switzer as the District 4, Position 2, judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals. Switzer succeeds Judge David “Mac” Glover, who died on March 23, 2019. Switzer will serve until December 31, 2020.

 

A new judge will be elected to the position in 2020. Under Arkansas law, appointed judges are prohibited from running to succeed themselves in the next election.

 

District 4 is composed of Clark, Garland, Hempstead, Hot Spring, Howard, Little River, Logan, Miller, Montgomery, Pike, Polk, Scott, Sebastian, Sevier, and Yell counties.

 

Switzer obtained an undergraduate degree from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 2001. She received a J.D. with honors from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) Law School in 2004. During her legal studies, Switzer served as executive editor of the UALR Law Review.

 

From January 2019 to April 2019, Switzer was the chief legal counsel of Quapaw House, Inc. She was a district judge in Garland County from 2016 to 2018. Hutchinson appointed Switzer to this position in December 2016, to succeed her father, David B. Switzer. She served in this position until 2018, when she was prohibited from running to succeed herself.

 

The Arkansas Court of Appeals is the intermediate appellate court in Arkansas–in other words, the Court of Appeals is the second-highest state court in Arkansas. It is composed of 12 judges elected in nonpartisan elections from seven appellate court districts to serve renewable eight-year terms. The court is located in Little Rock, Arkansas.

 

Courts of appeal serve as an intermediate step between the trial courts and the courts of last resort (usually the state supreme court) in a state. There are 972 intermediate appellate court judgeships nationwide.

 

Of the 19 states with popularly elected appeals court judges, only Arkansas and Louisiana outright prohibit interim judges from seeking a full term. Interim judges in Pennsylvania are traditionally expected to not seek full terms.