Past Recipients
     >>2004 Richard Sheppard Arnold

United States Circuit Judge Richard Sheppard Arnold of Little Rock, Ark., is a U.S. Circuit Judge for the Eighth District. Arnold was born in Texarkana, Texas, in 1936 and was raised in Arkansas. He attended undergraduate school at Yale and law school at Harvard, graduating first in his class from both schools. After law school, he clerked for Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States. Arnold practiced law for several years in Washington, D.C., and Texarkana and worked for Dale Bumpers when Bumpers was governor and a U.S. senator.

In 1978 President Jimmy Carter nominated Arnold to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas. In late 1979 President Carter nominated Arnold to fill a newly-created seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The U.S. Senate confirmed Arnold in February 1980. From 1992 through 1998, he served as the Eighth Circuit's Chief Judge. He took senior status in April 2001. Arnold also was the 1999 recipient of the prestigious Edward J. Devitt Distinguished Service to Justice Award.

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