NC Court of Appeals Judge, Seat 2

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:

Bell is a strict constructionist and identifies U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the justice whose judicial philosophy most closely resembles his own. Hampson believes that when the law is properly interpreted and applied, it should make sense in the real and current world for real people. 

GEORGE COOPER BELL (Republican)

George Bell campaign website

WHO IS GEORGE COOPER BELL?

George Cooper Bell has been a North Carolina Superior Court judge in Mecklenburg County since 2019, after winning election to the bench in 2018. He graduated from Cornell University and Regent University School of Law. He was admitted to practice law in North Carolina in 2006 and, before becoming a judge, practiced with his wife in a small law firm where his work focused heavily on criminal law.

As a Superior Court judge, Bell says he has presided over more than 100 felony jury trials, including first-degree murder cases, violent crimes and habitual-felon proceedings. That gives Bell substantial judicial experience, although the job he is seeking is quite different from the one he now holds. A Superior Court judge conducts trials, hears evidence, rules on objections and, in criminal cases, imposes sentences. Court of Appeals judges generally review what happened in those courts to determine whether the law was applied correctly.

Bell’s record also includes a 2019 public reprimand from the North Carolina State Bar for making a false statement to a court. According to reporting by WFAE, the matter involved Bell seeking a modification of a client’s probation without first consulting the probation officer and incorrectly representing that the client was in good standing. Because Bell was also licensed in Tennessee, the Tennessee Supreme Court imposed reciprocal public discipline in 2020.

WHAT KIND OF JUDGE WOULD BELL BE?

Bell describes himself as a strict constructionist and textualist and identifies U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the justice whose judicial philosophy most closely resembles his own. He says judges should interpret law rather than make it and that laws should generally be changed through the legislature rather than by judges. When statutory language is clear, Bell says its plain meaning should control. When the language is ambiguous, he says he looks to legislative materials to determine what lawmakers intended.

Bell also rejects the idea of the law as a “living, breathing document.” He says judges should apply the Constitution according to its original public meaning and describes judicial restraint as exercising caution and deference while respecting the separation of powers between the courts and legislature. But his answers are not quite as absolute as that description might suggest. Asked whether present-day public opinion or the consequences of a decision may ever properly be considered when interpreting a statute or constitutional provision, Bell answered, “Yes, but not dispositive.” And when asked what a judge should do if precedent conflicts with the Constitution’s text or original meaning, Bell did not say precedent should simply be discarded. He said judges should follow precedent, “but not to the exclusion of our Constitution.” Whatever that means.

CRIME, PUNISHMENT AND “TAKEOVERS”

Public safety occupies an unusually prominent place in Bell’s argument for election to the Court of Appeals. He points to his Superior Court record sentencing people convicted of violent crimes, including imposing life-without-parole sentences. He says people must be held accountable for their actions and describes keeping communities safe from violent crime as part of his work as a judge. In his statement for the State Board of Elections voter guide, Bell goes much further: “Our cities are under attack and there are takeovers almost every weekend creating serious, dangerous situations.” Whatever that means.

Bell’s emphasis on criminal sentencing tells us something about the values he stresses as a trial judge and candidate. But Court of Appeals judges do not sentence criminal defendants. They review trial-court proceedings for errors of law. That distinction matters in evaluating Bell’s experience. His years on the Superior Court bench give him firsthand knowledge of how trials actually work and how appellate decisions affect the judges who must apply them. But the publicly available record of appeals from Bell’s courtroom provides relatively little evidence of how he himself would approach the written opinions, statutory interpretation and precedent that make up much of an appellate judge’s work.

ENDORSEMENTS:

Tobias “Toby” Hampson (Democrat)

JudgeTobyHampson.com

WHO IS TOBY HAMPSON?

Hampson graduated from American University and Campbell University School of Law. He began his legal career clerking for three judges on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and later spent years in private practice handling appeals in state courts. Before becoming a judge, Hampson led the appellate-practice group at Wyrick Robbins and became a North Carolina State Bar-certified specialist in appellate practice.

Hampson has served on the North Carolina Court of Appeals since 2019, after winning election to the court in 2018. In other words, most of Hampson’s legal career has been spent doing the kind of work Court of Appeals judges do: interpreting statutes and constitutional provisions, applying precedent, and deciding whether lower courts correctly applied the law.

WHAT KIND OF JUDGE IS HAMPSON?

Hampson describes his judicial philosophy this way: “When the law is properly interpreted and properly applied, it should make sense in the real world.”

The last part of that sentence could mean almost anything standing alone. But Hampson says interpretation begins with faithful application of the relevant statute or constitutional provision and the precedent governing the case. He also believes judges should remember that their decisions operate outside the courthouse, affecting actual people and institutions.

Hampson traces part of that philosophy to a case he handled as a practicing lawyer. He represented a grandmother in a custody dispute in which the trial court ruled against her. Hampson appealed and won a reversal. When the case returned to the trial court, an arrangement was ultimately reached that recognized both the grandmother’s relationship with the child and the father’s parental rights. Hampson says the experience helped shape his belief that properly applied law should work in the world it governs.

WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE FROM THE BENCH?

A 2023 criminal case involving a drug-sniffing dog provides a useful example. In State v. San, police stopped a vehicle for a traffic violation. While one officer was dealing with the traffic stop, another used a drug-sniffing dog around the vehicle. The dog alerted, police searched the vehicle, and the defendant was ultimately convicted of methamphetamine trafficking and firearms offenses.

The defendant argued on appeal that police had violated the Fourth Amendment by unlawfully extending the traffic stop in order to conduct the dog sniff. Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Hampson began with the constitutional rule: police cannot prolong an otherwise completed traffic stop for an unrelated dog sniff unless they have the reasonable suspicion necessary to justify extending the detention. But that did not end the inquiry. The trial court had found that the dog sniff began while the officer was still explaining the warning citation. Hampson concluded there was competent evidence in the record supporting that finding. Because the dog sniff occurred while the traffic stop was still underway rather than prolonging it, the court held that the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights had not been violated. The conviction stood.

The case provides a useful test of Hampson’s “real world” language. He recognized the constitutional protection claimed by the defendant, examined how the stop actually unfolded, and applied existing precedent to those facts. The practical consequences of the case did not replace the governing law or require a result favorable to the defendant.

THE GRIFFIN ELECTION CASE

Hampson also points us to his 2025 dissent in Griffin v. North Carolina State Board of Elections, the litigation arising from the extraordinarily close 2024 election for a seat on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin challenged thousands of ballots after the election. Hampson dissented when a Court of Appeals majority allowed categories of challenged ballots to be reconsidered or excluded. His dissent began with a basic factual point: Griffin had not identified a challenged voter who was actually ineligible to vote under the laws and rules governing the election. Then Hampson’s legal analysis went considerably further. He argued that voters had cast their ballots under statutes and election rules already in effect and that courts should not change those rules retroactively after the votes had been cast. His dissent relied on existing statutes and regulations, precedent, the proper standard of judicial review, notice to voters, equal-protection concerns and legal principles limiting changes to election rules after an election.

For Hampson, the question was not simply what outcome seemed fairest after the election. It was whether government and the courts could apply different requirements after voters had already acted in reliance on the rules they were given. That concern with law as something people must be able to rely upon in the real world runs through Hampson’s description of judging. Hampson asserts that appellate judging should be disciplined by text and precedent but not divorced from the circumstances in which law operates.

ENDORSEMENTS:

SOURCES/LINKS for George Cooper Bell

SOURCES/LINKS for Tobias “Toby” Hampson