- Richard S. Arnold
Richard Sheppard Arnold (
March 26 ,1936 -September 23 ,2004 ) was a highly acclaimedjudge of the U.S. District Court and then theU.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit . Two presidents,Richard M. Nixon andBill Clinton , considered naming Arnold to theUnited States Supreme Court . Polly Price, a former Arnold law clerk and anEmory University lawprofessor who is writing abiography of Arnold, said that the judge will be remembered like the great juristLearned Hand : "perhaps the best judge never to serve on the Supreme Court." In May 2002, the U.S. Courthouse in Little Rock was renamed in Judge Arnold’s honor.President
Jimmy Carter nominated Arnold, a fellow Democrat, to the District Court of both the Eastern and Western districts of Arkansas onAugust 14 ,1978 . Barely a year later, onDecember 19 ,1979 , Carter named Arnold to a new position on the appeals court headquartered in St. Louis. In that the appeals court meets in three-judge panels, Arnold continued to operate mostly from Little Rock. The U.S. Senate confirmed Arnold onFebruary 20 ,1980 , for the appeals court. He was chief judge of the Eighth Circuit from 1992-1998. He assumed senior status onApril 1 ,2001 , which allowed him to lighten his workload and to concentrate in detail on fewer cases. During his last twelve years on the court, he served with his younger brother, Judge Morris S. "Buzz" Arnold, a Republican appointed by PresidentGeorge Herbert Walker Bush .Early years, family, education
Arnold was born in
Texarkana, Texas , the son of Richard Lewis Arnold, a specialist in publicutilities law. All the men on both sides of his family were lawyers. His grandfather, William H. Arnold, Sr., practiced law in Texarkana and was a circuit judge and an ArkansasBar Association president. Arnold's uncle, William H. Arnold, Jr. (died 1977), was aRhodes Scholar and the leading expert onoil and gas in Arkansas.Arnold's maternal grandfather was Democratic
U.S. Senator Morris Sheppard (1875-1941) ofTexas , who served from 1913 until his death in office. Morris Sheppard was also the grandfather of formerU.S. Senator Connie Mack, III (born 1940), aFlorida Republicanbanker . Arnold said that he "never really considered being anything else but a lawyer."Arnold completed the Classical Studies program at
Phillips Exeter Academy inNew Hampshire in 1953. He then attendedYale University inNew Haven, Connecticut , where he majored inLatin and Greek, was president of the YaleDebating Association, a member of the Elizabethan Club, and was elected toPhi Beta Kappa . He graduated "summa cum laude " first in his class in 1957. He received hisLL.B. degree fromHarvard Law School in 1960, again graduating first in his class.Arnold married the former Gale Hussman of Camden in 1958, but the marriage ended in
divorce in 1975. Gale was the daughter of the Arkansaspublisher andmass media mogulWalter E. Hussman, Sr. , the granddaughter of another publisher,Clyde E. Palmer , and the sister of a third,Walter E. Hussman, Jr. of the "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ". Arnold had two daughters by Gale: Janet Sheppard Arnold Hart ofSan Carlos, California , and Lydia Palmer Arnold Turnipseed ofSyracuse, New York . In 1979, he married the former Kay Kelley, who survived him.Arnold was also general counsel for his first father-in-law's Palmer Media Group, which in 1973 became
WEHCO Media , Inc., the corporate owner of the "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette". He provided advice on libel law, contracts for new presses, andcable television franchise renewals.Lawyer in Washington and Texarkana
Arnold clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, from 1960-1961. He once told a friend that while he admired Brennan, he disagreed with many of Brennan's interpretations of the
United States Constitution . Arnold joined the law practice ofCovington & Burling inWashington, D.C. , from 1961-1964. He also taught parttime at theUniversity of Virginia Law School . He then became a partner in his family-owned Arnold & Arnold firm inTexarkana, Arkansas , from 1964-1973. He was a delegate to the seventh Arkansas Constitutional Convention from 1969-1970.Political campaigns
Twice he ran unsuccessfully in the critical Democratic primary for the
United States House of Representatives . He lost in 1966 to David Hampton Pryor of Camden for the Fourth Congressional District seat vacated by then newly-appointed U.S. District JudgeOren Harris . In 1968, Arnold was a delegate to the tumultuousDemocratic National Convention , which met inChicago to assemble the Humphrey-Muskie ticket, the first Democratic team ever to lose the electoral votes of Arkansas since Reconstruction. Arnold was beaten again in the 1972 primary by thenAttorney General Raymond Hoyt "Ray" Thornton, Jr., of Sheridan, the seat of Grant County.In 1973, Arnold became legislative secretary to
Governor Dale Leon Bumpers in Little Rock. In 1975, he became legislative assistant to newly-elected U.S. Senator Bumpers in Washington. He remained on Bumpers' staff until 1978.Consideration for the Supreme Court
Arnold was considered "a principled liberal and an old-fashioned Southern gentleman." He befriended a young Bill Clinton, who later as President, according to Clinton's
autobiography "My Life", would have named Arnold to the Supreme Court in 1994 had not the jurist been long diagnosed withlymphoma .Justice Robert L. Brown of the
Arkansas Supreme Court , another long-time friend, said that he knew no one "who is held in higher esteem. As we all know, he should’ve been appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m sorry that did not happen. He was the man for the job."Arnold had first been suggested for the seat in 1970 when former opponent Pryor, who later described himself as a "very, very close friend" of Arnold's, wrote a letter to President Nixon, who was looking for a Southerner to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Nixon went with the failed
Harrold Carswell nomination instead.Arnold's judicial temperament
Attorney Mark Arnold (not related to Judge Arnold) of the
Husch Blackwell Sanders firm in St. Louis called him "the best judge I ever saw -- brilliant mind and yet as pragmatic and as down to earth a man as you would ever find. And yet, as good a judge as he was, he was an even better person -- modest, unassuming, a man of principle and conviction, yet always open-minded and willing to listen." One of Arnold's former law clerks described him as "a brilliant attorney with a self-effacing kindness and affability unlike any I have ever seen."Arnold was a member of a plethora of professional and civic associations. He won many honors, including the
Environmental Law Institute Award in 1996, theEdward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award in 1999, and theLewis F. Powell, Jr. , Award, named for the former U.S. Supreme Court justice from Virginia who was appointed by President Nixon in 1971 to replace JusticeHugo L. Black .The Eighth Circuit hears appeals from federal cases in Arkansas,
Iowa ,Missouri ,Nebraska ,North Dakota ,South Dakota , andMinnesota . In his court tenure, Arnold penned approximately seven hundred written opinions which displayed a mastery of the written word and were considered well-reasoned and focused. Arnold also wrote legal articles for law reviews and journals. He wrote in a simple style so that laymen too could understand his findings.In "A Tribute to Chief Judge Richard S. Arnold" in the "Minnesota Law Review" (Vol. 78, No. 1, 1993), Justice Brennan and Judge
Patricia M. Wald were among the jurists who hailed Arnold's judicial record of accomplishment.Key legal cases
Arnold participated in a number of noteworthy cases. He was integral to the three-judge panel that upheld a lower court ruling which released the Little Rock School District from more than forty years of federal court supervision of its
desegregation efforts. Arnold wrote the 22-page opinion.In one of his most widely-known cases, Arnold ruled that the Jaycees, or the
Junior Chamber of Commerce , could exclude women as members. He was overturned by the Supreme Court.Other significant decisions included a strongly worded 1985 opinion in a school desegregation case in which he and other judges on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis held that consolidation was not the answer to "de facto"
segregation in Pulaski Countypublic schools .Another of Arnold’s prominent rulings was a landmark 1989 decision that he authored for a three-judge panel requiring the Arkansas Board of Apportionment to create super-majority districts to ensure that voters in the
Mississippi River Delta would elect someAfrican American state legislators. In 1990, when Bill Clinton won his last term as governor, Arkansas voters set precedent by electing blacks to one position in theArkansas State Senate and ten of the one hundred seats in theArkansas House of Representatives .Arnold was considered neither liberal nor conservative on the bench, with his decisionmaking stemming from the facts of the case and not ideology. However, he was a member of the
American Civil Liberties Union . He worked in one case to secure religious liberties for aBlack Muslim inprison . Judge Morris Arnold said that his older brother had a "sense of balance and fairness. He never had an apparent ideological ax to grind."Arnold's legacy
Arnold, who was known for his trademark bow ties, died from an infection which developed during treatment for lymphoma at the Rochester
Methodist Hospital inRochester, Minnesota . Though he had been ill prior to his death, he had remained active on the bench.Morris Arnold said that what stood out about his brother was the "consistently high-quality work he has done. He was second to none in the country. I mean that literally."
Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas described Arnold as "a brilliant, brilliant man. . . a model of humility and self-deprecation." Another justice,Antonin Scalia of Virginia, said that Arnold's "carefully reasoned and beautifully written opinions were models of the art of judging. He has been a friend of mine since the days when he finished ahead of me (and first in the class) at Harvard Law School."Services for Judge Arnold were held in the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral on West 17th Street in Little Rock. There was a standing-room-only throng in the sanctuary, which seats five hundred.
See also
*
List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States References
*http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/007962.php
*http://www.innsofcourt.org/Content/Default.aspx?Id=320
*http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=14098
*http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=61
*http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/sheppard.html
*http://politicalgraveyard.com/bio/arnold.html
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