NC Court of Appeals Judge, Seat 1

NOTE: You may vote for one. Candidates are presented below in the order they appear on your ballot. All of my research sources and links for these candidates are presented after and below the candidate profiles.

Reason for my Endorsement:

Administrative law judges don’t preside over criminal trials or divorces. They generally hear disputes involving state government: cases involving state employees, professional licenses, regulations and decisions made by state agencies. The judge Byrne most admires is Antonin Scalia. He believes the Constitution should be interpreted by its Original intent, and he supports a strong deference to the General Assembly’s policymaking authority. The judge Arrowood most admires Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He emphasizes emphasizes precedent, equal application of the law, and constitutional rights.

MICHAEL C. BYRNE (Republican)

Michael Byrne campaign website

WHO IS MICHAEL C. BYRNE?

Byrne has been practicing law in North Carolina for about thirty years and has spent the last six as an administrative law judge. He graduated from NC State and Campbell University School of Law and was admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1996.

Before becoming a judge in 2020, Byrne spent much of his legal career handling cases before the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings and more than twenty appeals, with a substantial part of his practice devoted to representing law-enforcement officers and other public employees in employment and disciplinary cases. As an administrative law judge, Byrne says he has now issued more than 400 decisions. He says ten of his decisions appealed to the North Carolina Court of Appeals have been unanimously affirmed and none reversed.

Byrne’s candidacy has been endorsed by the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association, the North Carolina Fraternal Order of Police and the National Association of Police Organizations.

WHAT KIND OF JUDGE WOULD BYRNE BE?

Byrne calls himself a conservative and says judges should “apply the law, not ‘make’ the law.” Asked which U.S. Supreme Court justice most closely reflects his own judicial philosophy, Byrne named the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Byrne also emphasizes original intent when interpreting constitutional provisions. Asked whether judges should consider present day public opinion or the consequences of a decision when interpreting the Constitution, Byrne answered “no.”

Byrne’s approach asks judges to look backward to the Constitution and what it meant when adopted rather than changing its meaning because public attitudes have changed or because a different interpretation might produce what the judge considers a better result today. And when asked which branch of North Carolina government the state Constitution intended to have the greatest authority, Byrne’s answer was emphatic: “The answer is unquestionably: the General Assembly.”

Byrne describes a judge strongly respectful of the General Assembly’s authority to make public policy, resistant to interpreting constitutional language according to current public opinion or desired consequences, but with a court still responsible for enforcing the Constitution when government crosses a constitutional boundary.

“GET IT RIGHT” WHEN THE RESULT ISN’T EASY

One of Byrne’s own decisions gives us a chance to see that philosophy operating outside a campaign. In 2022, Byrne heard the case of a state employee who had been fired by the Department of Health and Human Services after being arrested and charged with serious sexual offenses involving a child. The allegations were disturbing. But the legal question was whether DHHS had followed the applicable law and established sufficient grounds for the particular employment action it took.

Byrne concluded that it had not. He ordered the employee reinstated with back pay. That is the sort of ruling that could be difficult to explain in a campaign advertisement. But legal protections do not disappear simply because the person claiming them is unpopular or has been accused of something terrible. DHHS appealed Byrne’s decision to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals affirmed him.

FROM ONE APPELLATE ROLE TO ANOTHER

Byrne has never served on the District or Superior Court bench, but he would not arrive at the Court of Appeals without judicial experience. He has spent six years deciding administrative cases, writing decisions and having those decisions reviewed by the very appellate court he now hopes to join. Before that, he spent decades arguing cases from the other side of the bench. His long association with law enforcement is an important part of that history, but I found no basis for assuming from it that Judge Byrne simply favors law enforcement when deciding cases.

ENDORSEMENTS:

JOHN S. ARROWOOD (Democrat)

John Arrowood campaign website

WHO IS JOHN ARROWOOD?

Arrowood grew up in Yancey County. When he was 15, both of his parents died within a few months of each other, and he moved to Caldwell County to live with his older brother, a Highway Patrolman, and his family. Arrowood has spent so much of his professional life around the North Carolina Court of Appeals that he has held jobs on both sides of its bench.

After graduating from Catawba College and UNC School of Law, Arrowood began at the Court of Appeals as a law clerk and later worked there as a staff attorney and staff director. He went on to spend more than 25 years in private practice, primarily handling civil and commercial litigation, and briefly served as a Special Superior Court judge. Arrowood first served on the Court of Appeals in 2007 and 2008. He returned to the court in 2017 and was elected to an eight-year term in 2018. Altogether, he has spent nearly eleven years on the court and says he has written hundreds of decisions.

WHAT KIND OF JUDGE IS ARROWOOD?

Unlike a candidate asking voters to imagine how he might behave on an appellate court, Arrowood has a substantial judicial record for voters to examine. His description of the job begins with equal justice and constitutional rights. He says judges should decide cases without favoritism toward either party, the state or any particular branch of state government.

But there is another part of Arrowood’s judicial philosophy that may tell us more. He believes courts have an important role as a check on government power. Arrowood has described that responsibility in both directions: courts must protect people and other branches of government from legislative overreach, but they must also guard against executive overreach, including protecting the legislature if the executive attempts to exercise powers belonging to it. In other words, Arrowood does not describe judicial independence simply as judges being left alone to decide cases. He describes the judiciary itself as part of the constitutional system of checks and balances.

He believes the courts have  a responsibility to check government power. But he also believe a judge is likewise constrained by the law that gives the court that power in the first place.

PROTECTING A RIGHT DOESN’T MEAN THE CLAIMANT WINS

A decision Arrowood wrote in March 2026 provides a useful example. In State v. Smathers, a convicted sex offender challenged a North Carolina law requiring registered sex offenders to provide certain online identifiers to the sheriff. He argued that the requirement violated his First Amendment rights. Arrowood did not dismiss the constitutional concern. His opinion recognized that internet activity can involve protected speech and that requiring someone to disclose online identifiers to the government can burden First Amendment interests. But recognizing a constitutional right and finding that government has violated it are two different things.

Arrowood examined the law under the applicable First Amendment standard and concluded that the reporting requirement was content-neutral, served an important government interest and was sufficiently tailored to that purpose. He upheld the law and the conviction. Arrowood  believed the court had a responsibility to examine whether government had crossed a constitutional line. He concluded that it hadn’t.

A RECORD MATTERS

Arrowood is asking voters to return him to a job he has already been doing for years. That gives us something candidates for judicial office cannot always provide: a large body of actual decisions showing what happens after the campaign language ends and difficult facts, statutes, constitutional provisions and previous court decisions land on the judge’s desk.

Arrowood’s record does not produce a simple formula for predicting every decision he would make during another eight-year term. But his own description of the job, together with the decisions he has already written, gives a fairly clear picture of where he begins: Courts are an independent check on government power. Constitutional rights have to be enforced. Precedent can constrain judges even when they might personally prefer another result. And deciding that a constitutional claim deserves serious consideration does not mean deciding that the claimant should win.

ENDORSEMENTS:

SOURCES/LINKS for Michael C. Byrne

SOURCES/LINKS for John S. Arrowood