Sad word came Thursday that recently retired Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Hannah of Searcy, an uncommonly decent and courtly man, had died. He'd left the court a few months before because of illness.
Soon came more sad word from legal insiders.
It was that this Supreme Court, famous for infighting and cliques and for manipulating the gay-marriage case to serve political interest and perform the disgrace of not deciding it, had never gotten around to a simple and typical exercise in courtesy and decency toward the departed chief.
It seems that, on Hannah's retirement after a decade as chief justice and four decades in the judiciary, the high court of which he'd been a member had failed to issue the usual and even perfunctory per curiam order praising him for his years of service.
"Per curiam" means an act of the collective court.
The failure was petty and small and not reflective of appropriate judicial temperament.
Yes, several of the justices issued individual statements or went on social media to say nice and respectful things about Chief Justice Hannah on the occasion of his passing. But a basic and customary per curiam on the occasion of his retirement, something he actually could have read ... he never received that simple kindness.
(For the record: A per curiam order finally got issued, only on Friday afternoon, after the passing and as social-media pressure mounted.)
You will recall that, when a court majority stepped up its politically motivated effort to delay the gay-marriage case by concocting an entirely new case to pretend to consider how to proceed, Hannah and Associate Justice Paul Danielson issued public statements disqualifying from that kangaroo-ness. They decried the maneuver as a contrivance.
I am aware that justices on the other side understandably resented that most-rare public action.
But here is the point: A Supreme Court justice, sitting among seven robed eminences as the final say on the fairness of the application of law in our state, ought to maintain diligently an appearance of objective detachment, decency, appropriateness and a generosity of fairness, even altruism.
That would have meant turning the other cheek when offended by Chief Justice Hannah's irregular public criticism. It would have meant extending him a common human and professional courtesy and avoiding this now-existing shameful appearance of playground-caliber pettiness.
Former Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who had a couple of run-ins with the Supreme Court's ruling clique, put out a statement Thursday afternoon calling on the court to put politics aside and issue an overdue per curiam praising Hannah for his service.
And then one justice--Rhonda Wood, who chanced criticism and even ostracism by distinguishing herself last year in granting me an interview on the procedural morass of the gay-marriage case--distinguished herself again for public comments.
In an article Friday morning in this newspaper about McDaniel's statement, Justice Wood asserted that she had wanted the court to issue such a customary per curiam for Hannah but that she had been "in the minority."
Word among court watchers has been that a four-justice clique--all women, as it happened, meaning Wood and Justices Courtney Goodson, Jo Hart and Karen Baker--had wrested control of the court from Hannah and fomented a prevailing schism. I believe that word has been wrong all along. Wood has not been in that clique, at least consistently. Justice Robin Wynne, a male, has sometimes allied with the aforementioned three.
Whether that essentially reveals the majority resisting courtesy toward Hannah ... those things are not to be known, you see, because the privacy of the Supreme Court's conferences are supposedly sacrosanct.
So all we have is good ol' Justice Building scuttlebutt, which is that the vote was three justices to issue the per curiam order honoring Hannah and four balking.
Well, that's except for the scuttlebutt that it was 5-to-2, which I doubt.
Wood has now said publicly that she wanted to issue the order, and that she was in the minority.
Justice Danielson was a dear friend and ally of Hannah. He likely also would have wanted to issue the order.
Chief Justice Howard Brill, who came in by governor's appointment to lead the court after Hannah's retirement ... well, I'd be speculating if I said that I suspect, as I do, that he favored a per curiam.
That would leave the aforementioned four, one of whom is running for chief justice.
I refer you to her opponent in that race. That is veteran Circuit Judge Dan Kemp of Mountain View. Associates invariably extol him as an uncommonly decent person.
It sounds like a decent person, or four or five, may be needed on this court.
Finally, I received this message from Circuit Judge Craig Hannah of Searcy, the late chief justice's son: "All the Hannahs want is for dad to be remembered for the great things he did for the state. We have no desire to get tangled up in all this pettiness. Politics has no place in the judiciary."
------------v------------
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 01/17/2016