James Robert Hannah
Critical decisions loom, but that’s nothing new for state Supreme Court Justice Jim Hannah
Our state Supreme Court chief justice has a bit of a Mayberry thing going. His favorite sandwich is bologna.
Favorite thing to wear, bluejeans. Favorite song, “God Bless America.”
Asked what people always ask him at a party, Jim Hannah’s wet blue eyes shine, not with pleasure. “I am not a partygoer.”
Three people he’d invite to his fantasy dinner party? Well, “Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson ….” He checks himself. That’s all wrong. It should be his two heroes — his parents, Frank and Virginia Hannah — and Jesus Christ.
Hannah’s so leery about the appearance of impropriety he’s loathe to admit that, almost half a century ago, struggling to finish a concurrent bachelor’s degree in accounting and juris doctorate at the law school in Fayetteville and already a father of three, he once rang up alcoholic beverages in the employ of a licensed merchant. Lord, he’s not proud of it.
If all this sounds stiff and square, Hannah’s happy to be both. The job of the judge is final arbiter, not always of people, but always in matters consequential to people. Square is closest to fair.
“That’s right, it very much affects their lives,” says Justice Donald Corbin, who retires at year’s end. “If I had an issue … I’d want him to consider my case. I would trust him to reach the right result after a hard study.”
Considering the primacy of law in this land, the relative credulity with which we regard judges of all ranks, Hannah’s staid mien is showroom shine. The man he looked up to most at the University of Arkansas law school is Robert Leflar. Here was another for whom case law — not courtroom legerdemain or earthly riches — is the exciting stuff of the profession.
Hannah grew up the only son of an Ozark, Mo., dry cleaner turned Dr Pepper bottler in Harrison. In high school, he earned merit awards in government and psychology. Once, after a particularly prolific scoring night on the basketball court, he asked Dad how many points he thought he had.
“‘Son, that’s not the point. It’s how the team played.’ I never forgot that.”
And here’s another, “Hit the deck!” It meant, “‘Get up,’ and if not, here comes some cold water.”
He and his high school sweetheart, Pat, married in 1963 during his freshman year at Drury College in Springfield, Mo. He’d expected to graduate and become a basketball coach, but a dense succession of births — daughter Jayme, son Craig, and son Todd — and his transfer to the University of Arkansas precipitated a more lucrative track. One May Saturday in 1968 he found himself with two newly minted degrees, one in accounting, the other in law.
Did he graduate at the top of his class? That would put him ahead of former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, U.S. Circuit Court judge and author Morris “Buzz” Arnold, appellate Judge John Pittman and several noteworthy lawyers. “I was good in law school,” he says.
With his two degrees, he weighed like the scales of justice an offer with Ernst & Ernst accountants out of St. Louis and an invitation from the Lightle and Tedder law firm in Searcy. The former offered considerably more money, the latter, more excitement. In early April 1968 he made it south to Searcy for a brief introduction to the firm. That night, he watched scenes from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and heard the news — Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.
Shortly, he made the decision to follow his heart to Searcy.
“What I was supposed to do was to do the probate and tax work … what happened is it’s a small town, and you take whatever walks through your door and try and represent them the best you can.”
In 1972, the firm went scouting another Fayetteville graduate and future political notable, and eventually changed its name to incorporate
this younger pair — Lightle, Tedder, Hannah and Beebe.
“I bought my first house from him, on Sunny Hill, and he’d bought it from [former state Supreme Court Justice] Darrell Hickman,” Gov. Mike Beebe recalls. “He made me pay too much.”
Incidentally, when Hannah got elected to the high court in 2000, then-Gov. Mike Huckabee appointed the 65-year-old Hickman chancery judge of the 17th Judicial District, Division 1 — Hannah’s locum.
“As two young lawyers together, we grew pretty close,” Beebe says.
Beebe used to use the ductwork between offices to pass along notes and inquiries to Hannah’s clerk.
“Then he left in ’78 [for a judgeship], and I practiced in front of him. He was a really good trial judge, very patient, much more patient than I could have ever been, listening to all that stuff you have to listen to as a chancery judge — custody cases, divorce cases, all those cases that bring out people’s emotions. He was patient always, and obviously, that takes some doing.”
To get that seat, Hannah had to win his first election.
“He was a hard worker. He wasn’t a stem-winding speechmaker, but he was a hard, hard worker,” the governor recalls. “He’d walk hours a day on the [campaign] trail. Ultimately, after he did that the first time he didn’t have to do that much anymore because he was doing such a good job nobody ran against him. But when he had to do it, he burned the roads up.”
Hannah spent about two decades as chancery judge in the 17th district.
APPETITE
“I won a pretty big case one time — this is the governor again, about to stemwind — “a man who owned a quail farm up in Batesville. The whole quail farm’d been wiped out by bad feed, too much salt. I represented the farmer against the feed company.”
By the time of the settlement, the farmer had restocked his quail. Ebullient in victory, he wanted to celebrate with a big quail dinner. Quail and potatoes and corn on the cob and biscuits and gravy, “all that stuff.”
“I think I ate two quail. He [Hannah] ate all the trimmings just like everybody else and 11 quail,” Beebe says. “Dangdest thing I ever saw.”
On Hannah’s desk sits a signed baseball and plastic-covered signed baseball card for the famous Los Angeles Dodger Wally Moon of Craighead County. There’s a red razorback stitched into the chest of his button-up oxford. Don’t confuse his matte finish with diffidence. This chief justice enjoys both halves of that compound title.
But the day after Christmas he will turn 70. The state constitution discourages judges, be they probate or Supreme, from running for re-election in their eighth decade by withholding retirement benefits, should they run and win. To date, no one — at least, no Supreme Court justice — has done it.
“If I had an issue … I’d want him to consider my case. I would trust him to reach the right result after a hard study.” — Justice Donald Corbin
Hannah’s term is up at the end of 2016. He said he will not be the one to sue to have the law overturned on the grounds that it discriminates. He has also said he’s considering running and forfeiting those retirement benefits.
19th Judicial District West Circuit Judge Tom Keith of Bentonville was burned by the law. He chose not to run for re-election in 2008 after five successive four-year terms of office, the last several contests won unopposed. He was unwilling to retire and quite close to filing a lawsuit, and still believes the amendment should be repealed.
“I had a little trouble getting our legislators to consider changing it — a lot of trouble, matter of fact. What I was told is they couldn’t get any support from the bar for that change.”
Curiously, the law doesn’t spell out whether the intent is to deny all retirement benefits earned as a judge, or just those accrued after the age of 70. Keith got several opinions on the matter and finally decided the proper lawsuit must come from a judge who wins election after turning 70, and then, only after he sees his retirement benefits withheld or compromised.
In other words, this one will require a trailblazer.
Justice Jo Hart said the hardest job any chief justice has before him is leadership.
“Unless you are a leader in the judiciary, it [the job of chief justice] would be a difficult task.”
Is this chief justice a leader?
“That’s not a fair question to ask me!” she groused.
She said she supposed Hannah’s greatest asset “is probably his ability to get along with the judges and the members of the bar in the state of Arkansas. I’ve worked alongside three [chief justices], [Carleton] Harris, [W.H. “Dub”] Arnold and Hannah, and he’s probably done that best.”
The court is shifting away from Hannah’s jurisprudence. Since 2010, three justices have come aboard who are female and conservative — Courtney Hudson Goodson, Karen Baker and Hart. In January, they’ll be joined by a fourth, Rhonda Wood, and they’ll have a majority.
Recently, the court celebrated the tenure of Jack Holt, chief justice from 1985 to 1995, inside the Justice Building. Holt and Hannah are from Harrison, as is Goodson. Later, someone joked that Harrison appears to be breeding chief justices, to which she said, “I hope so!”
This female bloc will be watched closely in the coming days when the court issues its opinions on the 2013 voter-identification law. Judge Tim Fox struck down the law in May but suspended his ruling, allowing the state to continue enforcing the law until the high court can weigh in. The court heard arguments Thursday and could rule as early as this Thursday.
Next year — likely — it will do the same for Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza’s decision in May overturning the state’s same-sex marriage ban. Liberal Justice Donald Corbin will by then be replaced by presumed conservative Justice Rhonda Wood.
“Politics has absolutely nothing to do with what we do in our jobs,” Hannah says. “However we got here to be judges, politics should have nothing to do with how we render our decisions.”
It should be a close reading of the law, in other words.
“You look at the facts, what has been argued in the law. You make your decision based on that.”
Of course, it gets tricky around the word “facts.” If it didn’t, after all, split decisions would be anomalous.
Hannah didn’t tip his hand about 2016 when his term runs out, but he doesn’t wish to retire. He says he won’t bring a discrimination lawsuit. He won’t let the constitutional threat mau-mau him into retirement, either.
Throughout, expect him to keep a low-low profile and take the high road, as he sees it, the kind of position staked by a small-town judge.
“If someone said [otherwise], I’d say ‘no,’” says retired judge and fellow ’68 UA law graduate Morris “Buzz” Arnold. “If someone said that Judge Hannah allows his personality to interfere with his judgment, that he has an agenda he pursues in some aggressive way, I would say no, he does not.”