Richard S. Arnold

Richard Sheppard Arnold (March 26, 1936 – September 23, 2004) was a judge of the U.S. District Court and then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Two presidents, Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton, considered naming Arnold to the United States Supreme Court. Polly Price, a former Arnold law clerk and an Emory University law professor who has written a biography of Arnold, said that the judge will be remembered like the great jurist Learned 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 on August 14, 1978. Barely a year later, on December 19, 1979, Carter named Arnold to a new position on the appeals court headquartered in St. Louis—a seat to which he previously had very publicly considered nominating law school professor Joan Krauskopf but eventually opted not to proceed with because of Krauskopf's "not qualified" rating from the American Bar Association. Arnold was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 20, 1980.