Judge Richard Arnold Biography

Polly Price's biography of Judge Richard Arnold of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (1980 - 2004) has just been published, introduction available on ssrn.

Price describes her book's subject thusly: "As a college student in the 1950s, Arnold had deep misgivings about Brown v. Board of Education as a constitutional matter. Yet he would later preside over the Little Rock school desegregation cases with a firm commitment to federal protection of civil rights and institutional reform. In this book I examine desegregation and other pressing federal court issues in the closing decades of the twentieth century, including the death penalty, abortion, free speech, and voting rights."

The Judge's work drew praise from both Justice Ginsburg (who wrote the book's forward) and Justice Scalia.   The examination of the work of federal appellate judges (as well as federal trial judges) needs more examination and this book looks to be an excellent contribution.

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