Jesse Smith Henley

Jesse Smith Henley (May 18, 1917 – October 18, 1997) was a United States federal judge from Arkansas.

Background

Henley was born in Saint Joe in Searcy County in northern Arkansas to Benjamin Harrison Henley and the former Jessie Genoa Willis Smith. In 1941, Henley received an LL.B. from the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville. He was in private practice in Fayetteville from 1941 to 1954. From 1943 to 1945, he was a clerk and a Referee in Bankruptcy for the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. In 1954, he became an associate general counsel in the Federal Communications Commission. In 1956, he was named a director in the Office of Administrative Procedure of the United States Department of Justice.

Judicial career

When Judge Thomas Clark Trimble, III, retired, the Arkansas Republican State Committee recommended Osro Cobb, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas as Trimble's successor. Trimble had sworn in Cobb as U.S. attorney in 1954. A former Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives, Cobb carried the support of Democratic U.S. Senators John Little McClellan and J. William Fulbright. Attorney General of the United States Herbert Brownell, Jr., had also promised to support Cobb for the judicial opening. The Little Rock Integration Crisis, however, ensued, and Cobb continued as U.S. attorney during the desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock. Brownell, meanwhile, resigned and was replaced by William P. Rogers. Cobb later said that his oil investments began to multiply and paid far more than he would have earned as a federal judge had he gotten the appointment that he sought.^[1]

On October 25, 1958, Henley received a recess appointment from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the seat Trimble vacated. Formally nominated on January 17, 1959, Henley's service was terminated on September 11, 1959, after his nomination was rejected by the United States Senate.

Before Henley's recess appointment expired, on August 18, 1959, Eisenhower had already re-nominated Henley to a seat on the combined Eastern and Western District of Arkansas, both seats having been vacated by Harry J. Lemley. This time, Henley was confirmed by the Senate on September 2, 1959, and received his commission on September 8, 1959 - three days before the expiration of his recess appointment. Henley's service on the District Court ended on March 24, 1975, following his elevation to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

On January 28, 1975, Henley was nominated to the Eighth Circuit by U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., to a seat vacated by Pat Mehaffy. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on March 13, 1975, and received his commission the following day. He assumed senior status on May 31, 1982, and served in that capacity until his death in Harrison, Arkansas. The J. Smith Henley Federal Building in Harrison is named in his honor.

Henley's older brother, Benjamin Charles Henley, was a lawyer from Harrison who served as a chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party from 1955 to 1962.^[2] In 1956, as his party's unsuccessful nominee for the U.S. Senate against J. William Fulbright, Ben Henley finished with 17 percent of the vote, well behind his party's presidential nominee, Dwight Eisenhower, who still lost Arkansas in the second race against Adlai E. Stevenson, II, of Illinois.

References

Sources

• Jesse Smith Henley at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.